Orangestreet11’s Weblog

Earlier this year Bollywood’s top stars Abhishek Bacchan and Aishwarya Rai got married. When they were getting married, top daily newspapers here in India were agog with stories about the wedding preparations, guest list. And mind you, all these stories were featured with photographs on the front pages of a national daily.

but give me a break. India is soon getting accustomed to the ‘paparazzi’ culture. But don’t newspapers and tv channels have better things to do. who cares from where Aishwarya’s mehendi came or what dress she wore. there are so many other serious things happening in the country like naxal killings, people dying of poverty. the obscene amount of money spent on the wedding could be used for more noble causes like charity or uplifting the poor in the country.

Why am I being shoved with images and news which I’m not interested in seeing? as someone rightly put it with the exception of Animal Planet and National Geographic channels, the rest jumped on to the bandwagon.

Recently Abhishek Bacchan’s grandmother Teji expired after a suffering from an illness. Again the media went overboard in its coverage of her funeral. Suddenly Teji was hailed as a modern woman, who sacrificed her luxuries and chose to marry a lesser affluent person.

Newspapers like the major dailies at least in Mumbai had profile of Teji Baachan. The front page photo in many dailies was Abhishek consoling Aishwarya at the funeral with captions like ‘Kuch Naa Kaho.’ As Mr P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor with the Hindu Newspaper and Magsasay Award Winner sys, “no one is bothered about the funeral of a poor farmer in Vidarbha who was deep in debts. His family did not even have the money to gather money to cremate him. And on the other hand you have the Late. Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani whose body was kept in an expensive sandalwood coffin.” Sandalwood is very expensive and found in minor quantities in our country.

So, my point is there are many other pressing issues in the country which deserve space on pg 1, rather than carrying some stupid entertainment news.