“Tu jaanta nahi hai, mera baap kaun hai”, is one phrase you grow up on if you were born in India. Oftenly used by not-so-good-for-nothing sons of politicians, businessmen, celebrities to escape the law or mostly to get their way in any complicated situation. If Shakespeare was born in India he would never have written “What’s in the name”, because in our country a name is everything, especially the surname. In Fact, if he would have written: “Everything is in the name.” Lame I know but what can I say, it’s still true, know.
But then I have a question for these men or boys, why they didn’t say anything about their mother. How would it sound, “Tu jaanta nahi mera maa kaun hai”, in our patriarchal world. Unmanly, right, a man hiding behind a woman even if that woman is his mother, even though it was she, behind whom he hid whenever his dad tried to beat the shit out of him. Now don’t roll your eyes, every Indian child does get a slap or two. A little beating does everyone a little good. The man who would ever dare to do it would have to walk, the walk of cuss shame. So in our country you can swear on your mothers and sisters, but you can’t throw their name around in a stitch.
But then if I think a little more, there is another reason for these YOLO kids not calling up on momma. Because Indian mothers, unlike their counterparts, care differently. They will definitely turn up at the place and would get you released too. But the moment you will be left alone with her , she will use all her homely weapons, from rolling pin to broom to the wiper for causing such a mess. But if that mom is anything like mine, then there are high chances that she will leave you in the officer’s care to teach you a lesson. Strange but that’s how our mother’s function and somehow we do too.
Now you might be wondering after being gone from blogging for months, why I am bombarding you with such lame stuff. The reason is simple, the recent events have poked me to rise enough from my comfy chair of short story writer to don the hat of a blogger.
Few days ago, NCB(National Narcotics Bureau) arrested a famous Indian Actor’s son for drug consumption and possession. In India it is a legal offence, and the punishment is quite lethal. And Indian media has gone all crazy on it. So now, every single move of either the parent or the child is showcased as something out of ordinary. Every few minutes I see a new pop up from my news app regarding him. At times it’s like he was seen smiling in the Police van, but then seconds later another claim would come that he wasn’t smiling but laughing. And there would be this zoomed-out picture of him, to prove their claim. Another time the news claimed the child was crying inconsolably on seeing his father for the first time after his arrest. Now is that a wonder, he is a twenty-something kid, in police custody for the first time. He wasn’t brought up to end up there, and yet he did, of course by doing some wrong shit. But it’s human nature to break down in times of crisis, it’s a human reaction, what’s the news about it? The parents aren’t spared either, five days after his arrest when the child was denied bail, a zoomed-out video of the mother crying in her car was released. Now which mother won’t cry in such a fucked up situation. It’s not strange, is it? Every time I fucked up I cried and along with me my mother would cry, at times yelling and at times consoling, so what’s the news here ??
Never before have I wondered if there is another side to “Who my famous father is.” There were other kids arrested along with him, their father’s rich, true but not famous. Fame always surpasses the money in the media. The proceedings are still going on, and so we should too hold our judgements. But no, there is the whole circus going on about it. Sometimes media houses forget that to the other side of the news, are people, human beings with emotions, and allowing them some privacy in such times would be a human act. We often feel that as a famous person they are liable to such kind of indecency. But I often feel it talks more about us than them. Our idea of news, our addiction to consumption, our judgment on others, and our words piercing the hearts. I often at times disconnect with the news until a clear verdict is given out. And after it, if I feel like I might talk preferably write about it. Today I felt like writing about it because I feel that our media houses need to be a little more sensitive towards what they are pushing down our throats. A little sensitivity, a little niceness, a little kindness, goes a long way. And as Maya Angelou says, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
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