Sunday, June 1, 2008

Goodbye Aarushi

For almost two weeks, one news kept flashing in Indian Media that seemed to have become interest of everyone who had access to Indian media. Aarushi Talwar a fourteen years old girl was murdered in her home. The police accused the domestic help behind the murder without an investigation. Just the next day the dead body of the servant greeted the police in the roof of the house. The whole tragic incident took became a mystery and media worked really hard to make it more spicy, mysterious and suspicious. Very similar to the investigating police media came up with theories of their own and they spared no one for being suspicious. They all went on ‘me first’ spree to cover the news. Police brought in one picture after amid media frenzy and when people started raising questions on their credibility. The government handed the case from one officer to other possibly to show how dedicated it is.
The deceased’s throat was slit and she died while her parents remained peacefully asleep in the next room. That obviously brought the family itself into suspicion. Media claimed the girl to be fourteen years old but the photo they flashed initially showed as if the girl was not more than ten years of age. Just a day later new pictures of her was shown in tv. That was a picture of a seemingly silent yet a lively girl. I believe there are more mysterious murder cases in India alone but the marquee kept repeating the biggest murder mystery of the year. Media is so powerful that it can set priority of any issues. While people are dying out of hunger in Africa, Bush’s daughter wedding was shown with greater priority. We do not care what is going on in next room but we search for information what did Paris Hilton do this weekend. I don’t know what brings in this celebrity cult but I can guess people love to see the things people got which they didn’t, they want to know how people act with things and name which they aspired for.
I sat back watching the news and feeling pity for the girl who had only seen fourteen years of life and must have had so many thoughts about her future. I believe this is the age when people dream the most, they are most confused, they are more excited and they have more plans. They do so many things to seek enjoyment which at age like ours we don’t. I felt sorry for her. After days long interrogation, police arrested the father and came out with quite a derogatory theory against the girl. They said the girl had ‘objectionable’ relationship with the servant. I have read ‘Lolita’, have heard about girls falling in for people much older than them but I couldn’t just believe it for the girl. Now I am playing media but I have no reach and power to influence over a mass. My intuition told me this cannot be true. A lively looking girl with reach to every thing she wanted falling in physically for a man at forty five who looked as if he were sixty five was something I haven’t been able to digest. Even if the police had any clue or proof I think they should have taken that to court not to public. I felt more pity for the girl and I felt her so close as if I knew her. I knew her as if I had talked to her, known her piousness, known her juibilant attitude, as if she had told me in my dreams that the police was lying. I did not also want to believe that the father was behind the murder. I have no reasons to justify this but I am not sure about the father. When the mother came out before media saying she had full faith in her husband, I watched her eyes, they looked tired and hopeless. Any other mother would have cried when they would be talking about their only child who was murdered just ten days ago. Is she so strong? My mother shuns food and she looses the brightness of her face when I have headache and how can any other mother be like the woman who was giving an interview in a news channel. God let Aarushi’s soul rest in peace. I was more confused than the confusion media wanted to create. It had become more mysterious to me than the mystery media wanted it to be. I loved the name of Aarushi’s group, they said the group was called ‘Awesome four’, I just felt the four members must have been very energetic. News channel kept showing the family picnic’s video clip. It showed how happy and content the family of three must have been and the father seemed equally jolly. He was doing some kind of funny act that was not the father who can kill his only daughter but who knows.
After returning from office last Thursday, I sat before the tv where they kept repeating “murder case solved, father behind the murder.” A news channel tried to boast how they had predicted the whole thing and very next day they pointed the flaws in police investigation. They had become more sympathetic to the family and more hostile towards the police. When referring to the accused father they had used the term murderer father and next day they replaced the term ‘murderer’ with ‘prime accused’. May be they had measured the nerves of public sentiment. They only needed sensations and there it was and they brought it with spices. A family was devastated and young eyes had closed never to open to see this world, the lips were shut never to open to smile, a life had left leaving a vacancy in life of many never to be filled and it was just a business to media.
Yes, the day when they claimed that the case was solved, I was shaken. I had a vigil over the issue since it came to the media i.e. from very next day of the murder and I had felt really bad for the girl. I felt sorry for the deceased girl when they blotted her character. I prayed it from the bottom of my heart for peace to her soul. Goodbye Aarushi!!!!

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