As a rule, I try my best not to feel strongly about what I see on TV. I mean, really! What’s the point anyways? However, it’s getting more and more difficult to remain detached these days.
After a long day’s work and an almost even longer commute back home, when I turned on the idiot box, it was strictly for therapeutic purpose. I was honestly looking to space out and just chill. The first step towards mindlessness is always aimless channel surfing. After going through the entire channel list twice, a good 11 minutes down the line, I came across a woman who’d very obviously been ranting the entire time. Curiosity and the morbid sense of satisfaction that one gets on seeing another soul troubled made me un-mute the channel. So, a certain Mrs Nandita Puri decides to write a biography about her dear husband. Dear Husband is Mr Om Puri, a veteran actor in the Hindi film industry with commendable achievements to his credit. So far so good.
As the marketing of the book begins, it turns out that the feisty little wife decided to dust out all the skeletons in her husband’s cupboard with a lot of care in her book. As expected there are dark secrets, painful experiences, unacceptable sexual encounters, unnamed relationships and more. The media obviously picked on the juicier tidbits like Mr Puris’ sexual encounters with his maids, (in plural) and another woman who looked after his brothers’ orphaned children. (?!?!?) I kind of lost the whole plot after that as Mrs Puri was very visibly (and vocally) agitated. She kept talking about how it was none of the medias’ business to pick on these bits of her husband’s life and how , if she and her husband didn’t have an issue with it, the public and media can go suck on an egg!( YEAH!!!) At this point, I’d had enough and with some revulsion turned off the damn idiot box. Sometimes, its really just that, AN IDIOT BOX!!!
45 minutes later, I turn on my comp to check my mail and the top most mail is an update from Mumbai Mirror (shameful yes, but I do subscribe to online gossip). The top most news is of Mr Om Puri lambasting his wife!!!
“I am in Chandigarh shooting for a film. On Monday I heard Nandita speaking about the biography she has written on me. I was shocked by her revelations. It was so cheap. She was talking about my sexual encounters as though those were my biggest achievements!”
“My wife has reduced a very important and sacred part of my life to cheap and lurid gossip. I had shared these dark secrets with my wife as all husbands do. If she chose to make them public at least she should’ve made sure to maintain a dignity about experiences that are a valuable part of my life. Has she forgotten that I have a standing in society and I’ve worked hard to achieve all that I have today? I won’t allow her to throw it all away for the sake of sensationalism. “
Where are the maids?
And so on and so forth. Another 24hrs , Mrs Puri even more agitated( now at her husband’s viciousness) , Mr Puri even more agitated( for having being vicious to his wife in press) , apologies flying around publicly from God knows who to whom ….and now I’ve lost the plot…again.
Disgust. Is what I’m feeling. The whole episode is a non-episode. Call me prude, but it is quite strange that a wife chose to reveal her husband’s private moments on the pretext of having to be true to her calling –journalism! HA! That the media thinks all of ‘this’ (whatever it is) is worth so much coverage. None of Mr Puris’ fans will think less of him no matter who he sleeps/slept with as long it was with mutual consent. And Mr Om Puri, its bad enough that your wife was dumb & crass enough to ‘reduce a sacred part’ of your life ‘to cheap and lurid gossip’, and at that, without your consent or knowledge; but reciprocating in the same vein doesn’t really speak very highly of you too. And I say this with all due respect.
It reminds me of that episode of FRIENDS where Ross & Chandler are fighting over a stupid joke and Monica finally has to yell some sense into them to make them see that it isn’t funny but offensive. On the same lines, Mrs Puri, your little gimmick was offensive to all- your dear husband, the women in his life, to maids everywhere, his fans, the press, and yes , to yourself too. Nobody is thinking about your brave decision to be honest to your profession. Guess, some things are best left in between the sheets on the bed rather than sheets of paper.
As always, am most disgusted with myself. I can’t believe I spent a good 60 minutes following this nonsense and then getting upset enough to spend more time out of my precious little spare time to write this post!*ROLLING EYES*
