Category: MEDIA

In my early days in journalism, I reported quite a bit on celebrity events, fashion and stuff like that. My Mother would say sadly, “When are you going to stop writing about people swinging from chandeliers and do some serious work?”. This was in the 1980s, so long before Sia was probably born, let alone singing about chandeliers. Do not get fooled into thinking I know anything at all about current musical trends, other than the names of a few singers.

The difference between writing about the world of glamour and rich people then and now is stark, though. Somehow in those days, we were irreverent and often downright nasty. The incomparable Stardust was so wicked, that sometimes my Mother would not let me read it. No one was so great that they could not be taken down a peg or two. Amitabh Bachchan refused to speak to the film media because of their nastiness! Did they care and go crawling to him? No chance! Anyone old enough may remember the saga of Dharmendra and Devyani Chaubal!

Did I make mistakes, go too far? All the while. Did I give in? Ha ha! I destroyed a happy professional camaraderie with a top fashion designer because I criticised him on a radio show. I upset a well-known artist because she went back on a quote she had given me on the uselessness of art critics. If your editor supported you because they believed you over the “celebrity”, well and good. If not, you learnt some lesson or the other and moved on. For the most part, people understood. If they didn’t, too bad.

We didn’t at the time dress up to go to fashion shows – who could anyway on the salary of a print journalist? I once sent a reporter dressed in jeans to an event where the invite specifically said “no jeans”. Who was anyone to tell us how to dress, as observers? We kept that distance between them, the people we interviewed and us, the print media.

With economic liberalisation, we changed in many ways and one of them was the corporatization of both the media and the glamour world. No access to anyone without going through a massive phalanx of managers and PR people.  Salaries increased. Fashion and style magazines erupted. Journalists who worked for them were expected to dress like the people they interviewed. Subsequent generations accepted this as normal, because they knew no other way of working. To be a journalist in the glamour world was to be a PR agent of another sort. Only praise was acceptable, or face the consequences.

This trip down memory lane is largely because of the Big Wedding which has dominated some media space, as a change from the usual politics. I remember a massive wedding from the 1980s. We were still a quasi-socialist country in those days. Extravaganzas and vulgarity were frowned upon. So when one of the richest Indians in the world decided to get their daughter married in Bombay, there was a lot of excitement. And secrecy. Every five-star hotel in the city was booked. Planes were chartered from London to Bombay and from a few other places as well. The wedding was for some reason in Juhu, although life in those days for the rich and very rich was largely contained to South Bombay. Film stars may have lived beyond South Bombay, but remember in those days only tourists got excited about seeing a film star. No Bombaywallah would stoop that low.

My editor at the time was a high flier, who was invited to the big day, full of expectation of a grand celebration. The next day in office she could not contain her laughter. The bride was decked in diamonds from head to foot she said. But guests were only served a bowl of ice-cream and a glass of Thums Up. The hosts said that they were against ostentation and pomp!

Soon after that, some jeweller booked Wankhede Stadium for a wedding. Caparisoned elephants were part of the wedding parade. Bombay was outraged and shocked at such gaudiness and temerity.

How things have changed!

So enjoy all the hoopla of the Big Wedding happening in Bombay after all the hi jinks in Jamnagar and the PR debacle of the cruise ship in Portofino. Enjoy the photos of celebrities, Indian and foreign, whether you’ve heard of them or not. Do not be an old person and grumble that one pop star performed in a torn dress at the Pre Wedding Tamasha while another appeared in publicity photos in his kachcha-banyan.

Gasp at the decorative lights and traffic jams strewn across the city. The designer clothes and over-the-top jewellery, the glitz and glam, the big names who attended and who didn’t.

And spare a thought for us, who once upon a time would have given you an honest, if a bit sarcastic and bitchy, account of what actually went on!

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.

Looks like the BIG wedding is over, or sort of over, because festivities now move to England. That’s how clued in I am!

Has the rest of India remained at standstill during the excitement or has life and its calamities continued with no concern for what was going on?

Out there in the US, someone shot at President Donald Trump who hopes to become President Donald Trump once again. In between Kim Kardashian’s non-existent choli and packets of bhujia sev for employees, I have gathered that the bullet hit Trump’s ear, that the shooter was killed, that the photos of the incident were fake, that the photos were not fake, then TV interviews of the photographer who took the photo that was not fake but only looked fake, that this was the end of the USA, the beginning of the USA, how assassinations and assassination attempts do not change history, how they don’t change history, that now Trump will return, won’t return…

If you have not watched the satirical film Don’t Look Up, please do. Not only does it excoriate the circus that the media has become, from trivializing every issue it faces to sidestepping reality to focus on the lowest common denominator, it also rips apart the charade of politics which is only about staying in power and how big money controls the world.

The film Civil War now on streaming platforms tackles the state of the world and in the media in almost a straight-out documentary manner – every different from Don’t Look Up. As it follows the journey of embedded journalists in a USA that is falling apart, it is disturbing, distressing and yet very real. The dissonance of reporting on a world falling apart and your own fears in such a world is portrayed with amazing sensitivity by an almost deadpan Kirsten Dunst, in one of her best performances.

If the great Ambani wedding was like a reality show, then so was the hoopla around the reactions to Trump and even to US President Joe Biden’s verbal miscues. They all fit into this image of a world falling apart, struggling not to fly off the edge and yet pushing themselves off the edge in the attempt.

Shades of the same dystopian reactions continue with the western world’s reactions to and support of Israel continued attacks on the Palestinian people. From the Hamas strike on October 7, 2023 to date, the deaths of thousands of Palestinians have meant nothing compared to the “right” of Israel to defend itself and the right of a few western countries to sell arms to Israel so that it can kill Palestinians more effectively.

I suppose we need to relate all this to the Indian media. In many ways, perhaps even for the media, the Ambani celebration a short and welcome distraction from reality? We could laugh together at the shenanigans of the rich and famous, even as we struggled in our own world. Rising inflation rates especially in retail and fresh produce have put additional strain on households already struggling with economic distress. Terrorist attacks, collapsing infrastructure, continuing anarchy in Manipur, sectarian violence, none of that has changed.

While a TV channel has apparently justified political assassination, or at any rate, not questioned a BJP spokesperson who did so, there are rumblings from territories within the BJP’s domain. A priest at the Kedarnath Temple, part of the Char Dham pilgrimage, has alleged a Rs 125 crore scam in gold layering work. The temple is in Uttarakhand, a BJP-ruled state.

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/kedarnath-temple-priest-alleges-rs-125-crore-scam-in-gold-layering-work-management-responds-11686995866850.html

In some countries this is known as corruption. But, well, never mind.

NRIs excited about Modi’s foreign visits are so important.

No?

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.

Falling bridges and train accidents… Scrolling through the news in India, it almost seems like we’re back in the 1970s when we were still not fully established as a successful growing nation. Plus the 1970s version of an Emergency, except as a non-Constitutional emergency, in that it is undeclared. Add to that a media that is state-controlled, high levels of unemployment, low levels of industrial and manufacturing growth and lo and behold, maybe it is the 1970s after all, just with the addition of social media and colour television and phones for everyone.

Except of course that it’s 2024. And perhaps one of the main differences is that you’re not permitted to demand accountability. In any BJP-run government, it is clear or has been made clear, that you are not allowed to expect, let alone demand, accountability. Everything that goes wrong is because of some earlier, non-BJP, preferably dead, prime minister. This pattern has not changed for 10 years. And since the much-reduced victory in the last general election is still being understood, we have not it seems yet changed our kneejerk reactions up in the high command.

The upshot is that the bulk of the media has not yet understood that responsibility for a flailing economy lies with an incumbent government. Any minute now the Union finance minister, same as the last Union finance minister, will make a Union Budget speech. She has already literally cooked the halwa, which in colloquial metaphorical expression implies that we are cooked. Whether this Finance Bill will fix any problems is another matter, but we should not expect much media insights on this.

We also cannot expect the media to focus in full measure on the completely unconstitutional move by the UP government in getting shops and stalls owned by Muslims to identify themselves on a particular so that Hindu religious pilgrims know where to shop. That the police is implementing an unconstitutional decision is worse. But sectarian division is part of the BJP package and so is the media.

That the UP government itself appears to be in some distress and that the RSS chief keeps making potshots at the prime minister ought also to be top of media over-excitement. And yet. I did see one “editor in chief” – it’s very amusing when TV people give themselves big fat titles like these – justify in a badly worded tweet the clear Islamophobia of the Assam chief minister. No language skills, no editing skills, but more than enough talent when it comes to creating and spreading hatred.

This knack which TV has is demonstrated in the case of Captain Anshuman Singh died a year ago, saving people in Siachen. A medical doctor, Singh had specified his wife as his next of kin, which means she gets his pension. Singh’s parents have made a sorry spectacle of themselves, demanding more money, vilifying their daughter-in-law with all sorts of allegations and speaking endlessly to TV channels about their family issues and their arcane views. The media is happy – it seems – to continue to amplify the abuse poured on the young widow, as they were happy with blaming Rhea Chakraborty for the death of Sushant Singh Rajput. Whether the parents know that they are being used is unclear, but they have become the next drama after the Ambani wedding.

Internationally, we have a media which behaves in similarly absurd ways. The Western media in general still hasn’t twigged on to the fact the whole world knows that Israel is the aggressor in Palestine and responsible for genocide. It insists on equating Israel and Hamas, as if the two are equal or that Hamas has killed thousands since October 7, 2023.

And the American media in general has plenty of questions for President Joe Biden – is he well enough, suitable, senile or not, makes sense, doesn’t make sense. For former President Donald Trump, who almost never makes sense, we hear about his rallies, the state of his poor ear and so on. The rules are not the same.

As we should know by now.

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.