Morning papers screamed ‘Julia Roberts is a practicing Hindu!’ Good for her but the unnerving part is we feel good about our religion and heritage only because an international celebrity has endorsed it! What is it they know and have figured out that we haven’t been able to in all these years?
At such times it’s difficult to figure out whether I should be happy because others are now believing in my belief or despair because it took us a Hollywood star to look at our belief with designer glasses. And it’s also the ‘breaking news’ phenomena that gets hype and hoopla around everything important, frivolous or anything else!
Am not ready to believe that no one just no one in the intelligent media circles could realize that this news is breaking just in time for the release of Julia’s next film Eat Love Pray shot in India. Well, something similar happened last year too when our own homegrown superstar had to shout from the rooftops and everywhere else that his name was Khan at an American airport just so that the posters of his film would go up in theatres soon!
There have been several occasions when a mountain has been created out of a mole! AB Junior getting married and someone slashes her wrist. TRP generated shaadi couple Mrs and Mr Mahajan and their ‘pehle kaan ke neeche bajao phir Ganpati ko phool chadhao’ drama with cameras all around was breaking news too.
When religious fundamentalists damage public property on Valentine’s Day, it’s breaking news. Who will tell them this is not breaking news but vandalism.
Summing the whole thing up….what you do, how you do, where you do, when you do doesn’t make good copy unless you break it to the press and which they peddle later as ‘Breaking News’.
But then there is the upside to it too. We know much more about than just politics and serious stuff…we know about college sweethearts finding love after 45 years with message in a bottle….we know about a woman inflicted with a disorder that makes her sneeze non-stop…we know about a three-year-old Chinese kid addicted to smoking…we know of a child marathon runner in Orissa who can’t stop running…we know of another one who at 13 will be teaching at the IIT!
Just because someone somewhere decided to make news and that’s any day better than breaking bones and breaking hearts!
So what’s the next breaking news?
Disclaimer: the views expressed in this column are those of the author and TellyChakkar does not necessarily subscribe to the same.
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