The media has willingly relinquished its power to beg for scraps from the star's table 
By Deepa Gahlot, May 3, 2007 - 04:23 IST
The debate over the excesses of the Bachchan wedding coverage by the media is still raging. And the issue of how much of a star's life is private, and how much the public needs to know, is a double edged sword - in this case, both parties are equally at fault.
If the Bachchans wanted a quiet, private wedding, then they could have had it either outside Mumbai, or at place where the media or the public could not have access. Hrithik Roshan, at the height of his stardom got married at his father-in-law Sanjay Khan's farm in Bangalore, and this mass hysteria was totally avoided. But you can't have band-baja-baraat-bidaai in the streets and then say you want privacy.
Aamir Khan booked a place away from Mumbai for his wedding and kept the media out, so he had the right to complain of trespassing by the media. The public - the readers of the newspapers, the watchers of television and the surfers of the net - would perhaps be interested in knowing about a star's wedding, but does the media in its race to provide snippets of trivia, have to climb walls, peek from cracks in the wall, and hound the caterer, designer, flower seller, etc for information nobody but the silliest of fan needs to know. By behaving in such an undignified fashion, the media makes voyeurs of all of us, and it is annoying.
However, when it comes to their relations with the media, our stars are also quite hypocritical. Aamir Khan, for instance, ranted about the intrusion of the media in an interview and swore he would never talk to the press even to promote a film; then at slightest hint of controversy - whether the Narmada issue or the cola pesticides affair - summoned the media to give his point of view, and everybody hopped on one foot and went.
Someone as undeserving as Mallika Sherawat, Rakhi Sawant and now Shilpa Shetty, can treat the media as their private fiefdom and get away with it. Because the media has willingly relinquished its power to beg for scraps from the star's table. If there was unity in the media, a star who demanded privacy would get it, and nobody would be able to beckon or kick the media on a whim.
Does anyone remember a single film Rakhi Sawant has done? Yet the media falls constantly for her publicity seeking stunts. Now she is famous for being famous - so even when she donates computers to a school or admits a patient to hospital, an SMS goes out to the media and they land up slobbering with the cameras and mikes. The Richard Gere-Shilpa Shetty 'kiss' episode has been stretched to the point where nobody cares any more.
There should also be some kind of media body to decide when an issue has been blown out of proportion and when enough is enough. Because the public for whom this rubbish is doled out, cries itself hoarse saying 'bas karo', but useless trivia is being rammed down their throats in the name of news and information.
The next star who gets married should either invite the media and get it over with, or hire a jet/submarine and do it totally out of the public eye. Nobody needs to be made privy to visuals accessed by peeping tom tactics, and nobody, absolutely nobody needs to know vulgar details like where the flowers, henna, laddoos, pandits, chandeliers etc. came from.
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