So the Talwars are back in the dock for their daughter’s murder. Last year, I read in a magazine what they had to go through during the erratic investigation of their daughter’s murder. The account of their misery was written by someone who knew the couple and can vouch for the fact that the good doctor has “gentle hands. What the couple went through after Aarushi was found murdered in her bedroom is not something you would wish upon parents who had no history of an abusive relationship with their lovely, gifted daughter. Nothing much has changed in the way the investigation has been conducted since then. There are no break-throughs. Nothing concrete. Just more presumptions and confusion. A dagger has been twisted once again in the heart of an already overwrought tragedy and the parents have now been presumed guilty till they can prove their innocence. No one knows for sure what happened to a teenaged girl within the safe confines of her own room but did it have to be the media circus that it became? Going over my old notes, I came across a story I had done for a paper just after the murder had rocked us all out of somnolent TV watching.
Regardless of the truth or fiction in this sad narrative, all the media really wants is to milk it to the last drop of horror. And the most unsettling part is that we are avid consumers of this story because that is all it is to us, isn’t it? As a nation, we have ghoulishly feasted on the tragedy and though it may have become dated, our curiosity hasn’t. As this story first published in 2008 will convey..
“The news channels have us at the first stab wound. Our attention. Our curiosity. Our insatiable appetite for details, the how’s, when’s and why’s of a murder. Just sample the salivation and regurgitation that followed in the wake of the multiple autopsies on Scarlette Keeling’s corpse. Was she murdered? Raped? Both? Were her internal organs removed? Was her head dunked in the sandy waters? Was she drugged? And as these gory questions flitted like dust motes around the memory of a dead teenager, there was her radiantly smiling face all over the TV screen, to rub in the tragedy and horror of it all.
There was the Maria Susairaj case where we were told ad-infinitum, just how many pieces the victim’s body was cut into, how it was packed in a bag and carried away in the boot of a car. The length and type of the knife were discussed as were the reasons why such an unthinkable crime was committed. Was it a crime of passion? Or revenge? The blood on the walls and floor was described along with the state of undress the victim was found in by Maria’s suitor. As were acts of other nature that preceded and followed the murder. Newspapers read like steamy novels and news channels appeared to have converted themselves into B-Grade crime thrillers. And let us admit it, we were all hooked.
Somehow, in the age of information overload, after a while even victims cease to be human-beings who wronged each other or were wronged. They become eye-ball magnets. In a few cases like the shockingly random murders of Jessica Lal and Nitish Katara, the inexplicable tragedy of Priyadarshini Mattu’s death, the media did play a role in keeping the memories of the victims alive and supported their families to fight for justice but then no one knows why one case is picked and another ignored by the media. Why for instance, no sustained coverage follows the so-called honour killings in Punjab? Why is that while the nation is collectively debilitating over the Aarushi murder case, not one channel is giving half as much coverage to the brutal murders of childhood sweethearts Sunita and Jassa by her family and the subsequent gloating of village elders over the inhuman display of their dead-bodies? Could it be that human depravity only in the urban context sells? Because it brings home the fear, “This could have happened to me?’’
Somehow, what happens in a remote Punjabi village does not seem real enough to us hence the channels play up the story that the urban viewer can identify with. Even the Nithari killings after the initial outrage phased themselves out of the memory because they referred to two demented individuals and scores of poor children who somehow did not become as real to us as Aarushi did. Do we remember even one name, one face from that tragedy? We know so much about Aarushi because she was one of us. She was on Facebook. She attended dance classes like other rich, urban kids. Was given expensive mobiles, digital cameras and luxurious holidays as gifts and was promised a birthday party in a pub before she was hammered and stabbed to death in her own bed while her parents slept through their daughter’s last gasps for life in a room made noisy by an air-conditioner. This is the horror that we cannot come to terms with.
How, did this happen? And why? And who did it? We ask again and again. And the media can’t stop answering. There is also the hint of extramarital affairs among two sets of parents, the question of the parents’ role in the whole mess, the totally unethical curiosity about the dead girl’s morals and we have a blockbuster that beat the IPL and the saas-bahu soaps. So househelp Hemraj was killed too but let us face it, we cannot be bothered with why he was killed and by whom though we are repelled by and drawn to the blood on the terrace where his body lay undiscovered for over a day.
Aarushi’s story was the biggest draw on TV because it brought home to us the fact that anything can happen to any of us and to our loved ones in the safety of our own homes. A study by Centre for Media Studies (CMS) reported that six channels featured her in news and special programmes for 39.30 hours out of a total 92 hours of prime time between May 16 and June 7 during the year of her murder. The report says that DD News, Zee News, Aak Tak, Star News, NDTV 24X7 and CNN-IBN telecast 234 news reports and 62 special programmes during the period.
Aaj Tak routinely showed horrific graphics of the girl lying dead in her bed while every report on her was accompanied by sinister music and blood stains all over the TV screen. Yes, fear sells. The fear of being a random victim. Of losing a loved one. Of losing face or a reality show and that is why results are prolonged painfully in every reality finale while the finalists chew their finger and toe nails in suspense as if their lives depended on winning what is most often, not a talent show but an sms poll. Remember how shows like Bigg Boss and MTV Roadies and Survivor denude contestants of their dignity? And make them do tasks that test their humanity and fundamental decency? Remember how Akshay Kumar routinely free falls from buildings for effect and an adrenaline rush? And cool drinks dispense wisdom about how fear is good because it spurs you to go beyond what you know? Fear is all around us, real, imagined, simulated and reconstructed and we cannot escape it either in life or in live reports about dead tourists and murdered little girls. Go on, be afraid. Be very afraid. It feels good, doesn’t it?”
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )