By Zohra Javed,
In the recent times media’s love for sensationalism has been boundless. Supposedly serious print and electronic media have also gone crazy and over-board with gossip and inconsequential news items like M F Husain insulting the Hindu sentiment, Taslima Nasreen hurting the Muslim ego, Amitabh Bachchan and the Maharashtra CM in a silly controversy, Sania Mirza to marry Shoaib Malik. Such trivias are blown up to larger than life size and days and weeks are wasted in going over their details.
It has been noticed that Shiv Sena wakes up with a start only to such issues having perhaps no other valid topic of discussion.
Everyone from the top editors of the media to the ordinary masses wants to keep themselves updated on these stupid non-issues. Of course the media is selling “hot cakes” to the public and minting money, the celebrities involved are getting some free and much-needed publicity, but hats off to the masses who in spite of all their sufferings are more interested in keeping themselves updated about such utterly idiotic gossip and feel proud in knowing more about Sania-Ayesha-Shoaib nikah-divorce, or Amitabh-Amar-
Anil equations than about why they are paying more for daal and why vegetables and fruits cannot become affordable.
This is not where the madness stops. The people are generally so absorbed by these things that they can go to great lengths to defend their favourites, in the process at times risking their actual relationships seriously, while the celebrities, far from the common man live in their own aloof high places, separated by a hard unbreakable partition behind which what they really do is visible only to themselves.
So now no one is discussing the GM seeds and Bt Brinjal. We hardly hear of Operation Greenhunt or the Maoists, or about the farmers who are committing suicides without any respite, or the tribals whose lands have been snatched away from them. Even price rise has been absorbed, it seems. The shock absorbers of the middle class are very strong indeed!
And if some activists do succeed in raising one or two such issues, the media does not cover them, they get no publicity and hence the masses largely remain unaware and oblivious of these issues that are happening right under their nose.
Is it not a paradox, a very inhuman one at that, that most of us masses swear by our ethics and love for humanity, we even try our best to save a dog or a cat or birds and insects, but we don’t even know how many homes are being devastated just because farmers who grow food for us have no money to buy grain for themselves? We don’t even care to look into how much suffering it is for families torn between courts, jails, hunger and helplessness.
We are supposed to feel proud of the Indians making it to Forbes list of the richest people in the world, but we don’t give a damn about the misery that millions undergo so that those few can reach the Forbes list.
What kind of a world is this — and if indeed this is the world — why is it like this. Surely we are not answering such “absurd” questions.
Yes! ask us about Shilpa Shetty’s marriage, Abhishek Bachchan-Sheila Dixit face off, Ranbir Kapoor’s love life and see how well we score!
So this is the way life is out here and will remain pretty much the same unless of course we the people shake up the dust that covers our conscience and clean up the rust that has jammed our self confidence.
Let’s stop taking celebrities and politicians seriously. As it is they don’t take us seriously at all. So it is in our interest to ask our leaders and celebrities to be accountable to us if they want our patronage. It is high time they realised their responsibility to the masses who vote for them and who put them on the highest larger than life pedestals. Time to stop hero-worship and start asking the heroes to show some real heroism for a change. Right?