Maggi: Misguided Finger Pointing

Okay, so Maggi is in the eye of the storm these days. My Maggi. Let me first do some prediction. Maggi will keep on being sold. Nothing will happen to it. The tide will stem, just like it happened with Cola’s. People will be paid and sweetened, and tests will pass.

The issue I want to discuss is News Channels questioning celebrities’ culpability in all this. The celebrities who endorsed the product. I agree, they should be to some extent, as they aided in fooling people to buy the product. But what these news channels conveniently forget is they too aired the same advt. And hence are equally culpable in fooling us.

If celebrities are made a party, then all the TV channels, news papers, each and every one involved in promotion and marketing should be made a party. Limit of absurdness, right? Well so is making celebrities a party. If they are endorsing an illegal product, I can understand the blame. But when Govt. agencies themselves certified it earlier, how does anyone, including celebrities, News Channels know? We all were fooled not by Maggi, but by our own system.

Why haven’t we created a system yet, which catches such crimes sooner. Everyone who earlier signed off on the clearances to Maggie should be the first one to be taken to task. Nestle is a Swiss company, What better to be expected of them than to leach on gullible foreigners?

Most important is to create a system which is not fooled ever again. Not so easily.

Mother Teresa: The Controversy

A recent remark by RSS chief on Mother Teresa and her missionary work has caused huge uproar across the country. Since Mother Teresa is generally considered an epitome of charity, the statement was bound to cause the ripples.

I decided to do some reading into whether she was involved in conversion or not. What was the real motive of her service? However I left my reading midway. A more emotive issue struck me. Why do people convert?

As I understand any invasion by a ruler of different faith brings with itself forced/induced conversions. It happened with Mughals and British alike with different degrees.

The real reason that came across to me was caste system in India. When we do not allow people of certain caste to enter temples, use common wells and subject them to any and all humiliation in the book, they tend to lose faith in the God they believe in. A ready dose of a different religion and a different God rapidly moves in to fill the void. By the time Hindu leaders (Entirely Upper Caste), understood this, the phenomenon had already spread.

At the same time, let’s not run away from the fact that primary mission of Christian Missionaries is to spread their religion. They find a ready market in the downtrodden and neglected sections of society. It’s a different matter altogether that nothing changes for such poor people in reality. While one religion makes them untouchables, the other religion neglects them once the aim to convert is achieved.

My request to Hindu Leaders would be to make sure caste system is eradicated and anyone who still practices it is thrown out of the religion. And my request to Christian Missionaries would be to stop carrying the White Men’s Burden and work for the downtrodden without asking them to convert.

What Times are Now?

An unfortunate controversy erupted when a leading English Newsgroup published a not so subtle article about a leading actress. Without getting into the details of the write up, silence of the associated news channel amuses me. On all other issues, this TV channel is always here and Now.

Had it been a politician who would have made some unsavory speech; had it been a police head who would have issued a demeaning guideline; had it been some actor who would have made some politically incorrect observation, the channel would have raised hue and cry on primetime and rightly so. The primetime which it boasts have garnered highest TRP’s in the last 5 years.

But today all silence. It’s not an isolated incident. If you go to their website, you would see more of such obnoxious articles. Skimpy clad images of female models collated from across the globe. Explicit stuff posted at the very top, just to grab eyeballs.

Some of the headings with equally raunchy pics one finds there are, “Babes flaunt assets online”, “Bollywood babes unbuttoned”, “Hotties’ peek-a-boo moments”, “Celebs caught pantyless” and “Celebs’ oops moment!” I feel ashamed even typing them, but not the newsgroup which can do anything for money.

What I am afraid is that such acts leave the fourth pillar vulnerable to attack. In their lust for readership to plunder advertising revenue, they are ready to sell the very essence of news. I agree that these pics are collated from public domain but why plaster them on the news website?

I urge Press Council of India to take suo moto cognizance and issue appropriate guidelines. Now is the Time to put an end.

My God, Your God

It was waiting to snap any moment. Whether a prominent Fakir is God or not, has been debated for some time. However the level of discourse seems to have come down of late. With self-proclaimed representatives on either sides uttering choicest of expletives on prime-time, it has become an embarrassment for the followers.

My parents are practicing Hindus and heed to every temple under the sun. They also go to Baba’s shrine to pay respects. I am agnostic to idol worship and have never given too much thought into.

More than faith, the issue seems to be the struggle for power. With the rise of the followers of Baba, a new religious authority has come up with equally fat belly and equally fat purse. So who takes the cake?

Whether Baba can be considered a Hindu God and can be placed in Hindu temples is the contention here. The body that guides the temples says NO with the other side lobbying for it. There are allegations of power play, money changing hands and what not.

As if it was not bad enough that successive generations have become disillusioned with idol worships, these fights have made it worse.

Pro-Baba lobby says, “Our sentiments are hurt; when you say remove him from temples”. The other side says, “Our sentiments are hurt; when you force his idol in our temples”.

I say, my brain hurts. Help me God!

Slumdog: An air of million criticism

A lot has been written and discussed about Slumdog Millionaire. Much like the Obama wave it seems engulfing us all.

From the day it was nominated for the Golden Globe there have been extreme views. So much so that a war seems waged between the for and the against. The criticism more or less seems to follow two schools of thought discussed below.

First one rues the exploitation of poor India for money by the west. More like the East India Company reloaded. Westerners have been accused to revel at the mockery of Indian poverty. As Arindam Chaudharywrites, “Slumdog is a phony poseur that has been made only to mock India for the viewing pleasure of the First World”. The naked poverty of India might be self pleasing to the people of the West, given the time of depression. According to Amitabh Bacchan such underbellies do exist even in the developed nations. This is just a Western production and hence the recognition. These people have launched an offense against the team of the movie, western media and finally the whole of the western world.

The other school of thought is pretty much the same as far as the murky portrayal of Mumbai is concerned. The difference lies in how they are affected. People are worried about the answers they would need to give and ridicule they would be subjected to when they travel abroad the next time. As Preity Zinta says, “Now for the next 10 years of my life every time I travel abroad, I will be told, Oh, you live in Mumbai…where they gouge out eyes in the slums.”

One point missing here is, Does anybody care about the poverty and feel for the slum dwellers? Or it’s just the poverty in limelight which is itching the eyes. At first the movie was applauded. Then the criticism followed. Then there was criticism of the people criticizing the movie. “Isn’t that (poverty and slums) a reality”, saysShahrukh Khan. It would not be long when there would be people who would criticize the people criticizing who criticized the movie. Now, how much of criticism would that be!

Akshay, Aamir, Awards: A Dilemma

Last night a breaking news simultaneously bombarded across all the News Channels. “Akshay refused to accept the Star Screen award for the best actor in popular category”. It was said that he was miffed at it not being given to Aamir. Here’s the catch. Aamir don’t attend such award ceremonies as a policy. Would announcing Aamir the winner take the sheen away from the ceremony, given his absence? To some extend, yes. Now what can Star Screen do? I recollect similar dilemma during the time of Gadar and Lagaan. Their resounding success was of so sheer velocity that no award ceremony dare give it to some other movie or some other star. Since Sunny and Aamir both boycott these populist awards, what happened? The award functions looked pale and just a formality. This brings us to the current discussion, Was Star Screen right in not giving award to the deserving, Aamir? Well, answer might not be as simple.

One solution might be to stop nominating them. Make it a policy statement. In the past a lot many award functions have done so, including Oscars. This might in turn end up lending them, a much needed credibility.

So why haven’t they done it already? Most of the award functions are organized by private media houses who need the stars for promotional purposes. Consider a scenario, “Aamir Khan not been considered for Star Screen awards”. Given the size of egos in Bollywood, Aamir (or his well wishers), might take it as an insult. This would open the floodgates, open war b/w camps (already there are no less). No media house wants to end up at the point of no return. So they try and maintain cordial relations. Not attending the award lends the star, a high moral ground. Not being openly considered might be taken as an outright insult. The truth today is that stars such as Aamir are more powerful than any particular media house. Hence they are nominated year after year, should they ever change their mind.