Funny how when a man is alive the media cannot report a single positive thing about him and when he dies, the same media leaves no words unused to sing paeans of the same man.
i noticed this practise twice this year. Michael Jackson could have done with some positive publicity in the later years of his life. The bad press is a major cause for most of the damage to his personal life (read the mountain of debt). And right when he died, the papers and TV channels were full of him, talking about the great talent that he was and how we had lost him. People (, some of whom never even knew who Michael Jackson was, ) reacted emotionally by rushing to the shops and buying his CDs (One of them is my dad, but he had the sense to check him out on youtube rather than buying his CDs). Upon not understanding his lyrics, they searched for them online, thus making him and his lyrics, “The most searched” terms on popular search engines. Had Michael Jackson got such publicity when he had been alive, he might have been able to pay off his debts. Well anyway, his kids might be benefited maybe.
And now it is our beloved Chief Minister Dr. Y. S. Rajashekhar Reddy. With all due respect, Dr. YSR was a great man, a visionary, a dynamic leader, a man of the people, a farmer’s politician, and all that stuff, but he was náive enough to board a chopper on a stormy day. Then the media started. The same newspapers that were always opposing his schemes and strongly hinting that Dr. YSR was eating away people’s money, by displaying his assets, were suddenly very deeply struck by his death. The news channels played Dr. YSR 24 hours a day, showing his entire life history with sad Telugu songs for the background score. The leader of opposition, N. Chandrababu Naidu, was suddenly waxing eloquent on Dr. YSR’s same scheme that he was against two days before. There were reports of farmers and schoolgirls comitting suicide, deeply affected by Dr. YSR’s death (Seriously. Not kidding!). Everyone, from the who’s who of the society to B-grade celebrities, has used the death of Dr YSR to it’s full extent, in order to gain more visibility. If some never-heard-of before Congress workers (Aravind, to name one) have gone out of their way in mourning, others like boring Telugu actor, Raja, have staged dharnas and left no stone unturned, voting for Dr. YSR’s son, Jagan, as his successor, only because he is his son (Please, now don’t tell me politics is also genetic). The Home Minister Sabitha Reddy (or something like that her name is, please check on google), visited the spot from where Dr. YSR’s body was recovered and “broke down” there, setting up his photo on against some rocks and sitting down with her fellow workers in order to pay the last respects. How many times!!? Every page of the newspapes still have news of Dr. YSR’s death, people paying their last respects at various places, “condolence parties” organised, where people are eating, drinking and smiling. There is no news in the newspapers. Only Dr. YSR on every page. How boring! To top it all, actor Rajashekhar and his wife announced that they would come up with a movie on the great man’s life. Friends, I am not watching this with you!
Maybe I should jump on the bandwagon too. What should I do? Go to the CM’s office with a knife pointing at my heart, thretening to pierce it if Jagan is not made the CM? Or climb atop a hoarding and threaten to jump off? Maybe I could display my blog URL on the hoarding. That would be another of my publicity stunts.
PS: I want to give a small message to my friends and enemies. If you hate me, do so even after my death. I don’t want to take that right from you.
