Attached below is an excerpt from an article in The Hindu. What has the world come to? My mother is ill, I go to see her (why am I "going" in the first place; wouldn't I be there beside her anyway?) and that makes news. Oh! my gosh!! he actually visited his mom? That is so benevolent of him. Have you ever seen someone like that? Actually caring about their own mom? He must be an angel. Oh! I wish I had a son like him.
Actually, why bother?
Soon we should have headlines with the following content:
PM's wife made food for him.
TN Chief Minister visits her son in the asylum.
Leading Bollywood actor holds his wife's hands. Admits to it too!
Leading daily editor brushes his teeth with his left hand.
What is it? We don't have enough matter which counts as news? Or is this really news?
Jesus H Christ!!! Save this world. Busy? Okee. Anyone else ready to do the job?
Read on.
Naidu calls on ailing mother
By Our Special Correspondent
TIRUPATI. Jan. 6. TDP president and the former Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, accompanied by his wife Bhuvaneswari called on his mother, Ammannamma who is admitted into the ICU of the TTD-run SVIMS here after she suffered a massive heart attack yesterday (who admitted her?).
He stayed nearly 30 minutes (that's a lot of time! He must have missed out on half the things he wished to say against YSR) at her bedside and talked to her briefly (aah! so they admit that 30 minutes was a brief period?). "She recognised me (after all you did find 30 minutes for her. This is the least she could do. Or the most?) and talked to me a few words before she slipped into semi-consciousness," he told (why, oh, why? I don't go around telling the mediapersons that my mom made gajar ka halwa today and she recognised me before serving it to me)waiting mediapersons outside the ICU. Besides his close family members, noted cardiologist and Director of the Hyderabad-based CARE hospital, Dr. Somaraju, who is the family physician of the NTR family, also accompanied Mr. Naidu from Hyderabad apparently (What on earth? Apparently? Someone help me out here.)to examine an ageing Ammannamma who is an acute diabetic and a renal problem patient.
Is this what India has come to? I always thought that out here children take care of their parents by default (usually out of love) and definitely do not make an exhibition out of it. Someone goes and checks on their mother and that becomes news? I have had relatives who had elders hospitalised. For heaven's sake, they would stay in the hospital, not visit for 30 minutes! Of course, people would take turns but nobody visited. Those who did were visitors not relatives (definitely not the immediate family).
Most of the time The Hindu [or any other "news"paper] has a soporific effect on me - except when I am doing the crosswords or reading The Magazine supplement :))
ReplyDeleteI read your post on your blog about your distaste for (or detatchment from)politics and I couldn't help smile. One of the reasons why I didn't try for an MBA is what I heard about the GD and interview rounds. I hear they ask considerable questions on politics and current affairs (I haven't yet resolved Ashoka's move into Buddhism and that is still current affairs for me)! Another reason is that I see people churned out of these institutes hardly as good as those who have stayed in the trenches and figured a wonderful way of handling stuff (especially the HR specialisation folks).
ReplyDeleteIn short (which never happens in my world), I agree that soporofic delight is all that one is fed from most newspapers (TOI and DC pep it with a lot of masala, too. Hindu are serious about putting me to sleep). But this was too much. I hardly read the newspaper for folks around me keep carrying articles in their heads and realise some crude calling of the gods to discuss it with me who has no clue abot what they are talking.
Cartoons, Business and sales, exhibitions and shows. That's all that a newspaper should carry. A lot more of Calvin and Hobbes.
@Eroteme: Oh no oh no! Cartoons, Business and sales, exhibitions and shows?!!! Oh My God! Lots more of Calvin and H?! What would I do for my daily fix of politics, national, state, international politics? News, Observations, Analyses, Conclusions, knowing what those in this most powerful and influential field of Politics are doing to each and every aspect of our lives, and to decide that they should go or stay ...I think Politics is/are very very important if not for anything else because politicians / MPs are The most powerful people of a nation.
ReplyDelete2. As to your post, no absolutes anywhere, Eroteme; no relationship is sacred, not a parent-child nor a sibling-sibling one; if I dont have the emotional motivation to help my parent, if there is no such emotional content in me, not because I am sinister or a villain, but just that I dont have it for my parents but maybe for a fifth person of a stranger on the road, I wont feel like looking after them.
I dont believe in these absolutes of society that just because I was born to these people (obviously I wasnt consulted), I owe anything to them. I am an advocate of the American societal attitude, where these eternal bonds between mother and son or parents and children are lightened considerably, with a lot of rationality and freedom added - the children look out for themselves from the age of 18, nobody is obliged to anyone thereafter - not the parents to the children nor the children to the parents. Unless each wants to have something to do with the other of ones own volition, not just because it is the unwritten tenet of society...
So I cannot see eye to eye with your post..."Shoulds" are always a big no-no to me, especially where interpersonal relationships go. Freedom to be oneself and face the consequences - that should be the mainstay of any relationship, not these strong bonds that cease to be ones of love and are imprisoning and claustrophobic / suffocating..