“From the dusty playgrounds of Ranchi, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has made it as the Captain of the Indian team, for the inaugural Twenty-20 World Cup” — screamed one of reporters of a news channel last night while trying to prove that India’s future lay outside metros, in small towns.
Further, the channel also went to the extent of talking to a so-called “panel of experts” that used heavy-duty quotes/words like “alternative culture”, “metropolitan culture” and “India versus Bharat divide...” to prove their point.
However, mid-way through the “Special” I reached a saturation point and could absorb nothing more when the reporter started a debate on “...has our system been unjust for many decades and only a thin elite has been ruling all fields, leaving out a vast majority?”
I mean, it was hilarious. I still can’t fathom the fact that what made the channel feel that “the Buntys and Bablis of small towns are all set to conquer, while the babalog of the big cities are fading away”. People from small and lesser known towns have been making it big for years now.
Virender Sehwag, who made his ODI debut for India in 1999 against Pakistan, is the son of a grain hawker, who lived in a house stuffed with siblings, uncles, aunts and 16 cousins in Najafgarh, on the outskirts of New Delhi.
His teammates, fast bowler Munaf Patel and left-arm seamer R P Singh, hail from Bahruch in Gujarat and Rae Bareily in Uttar Pradesh, respectively.
Irfan Pathan, who made his India debut in 2003, grew up in a mosque in Baroda, Gujarat, in an impoverished family. His father served as the muezzin. Now, even his brother Yusuf has made it to the Twenty-20 squad.
Current bollywood queen Priyanka Chopra, who won the Miss World title in 2000, completed high school at Army Public School in Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh.
Then there is Govinda who was born and brought up in Virar, a far-flung outpost of Mumbai. “Chi chi”, as he is popularly known as, made his Hindi film debut in 1986, and has since acted in over 120 films with some of the biggest names in Bollywood.
About 5-6 finalists in each of the three editions of Indian Idol, a talent hunt show, were from places such as Jharkhand, Shillong, Uttaranchal etc.
So from where did this utter crap debate on “…the future of India lie outside the big cities” creep up?
I am not trying to take anything away from the people mentioned above and many others who have made it big from humble beginnings. All that I am trying to say is that why sensationalise such a fact which is not new, which has been happening for years? Why can’t the media curb its instinct for sensationalism for anything and everything? After all those patronizing teasers of the so-called “big story of the day”, the much-hyped story turned out to be a 30-minute “crap-athon”.
All that I can think of now is something that I had read in another blog — “The Indian media is full of vested interests, idiots who pontificate knowledge and predators preying on the infirm and intellectually challenged...”
How true!
