Touring Talkies

Death: Brought to you Live by.....

It took someone’s death to jolt me out of my slumber and I could not resist publishing my long pending “next article” here. This is about the recent death by suicide of one Mr Abdul Rahim, in Karimnagar District of Andrapradesh. The link and the innocent looking newspaper clippidoesn'tesn’t attract much attention. What does not meet the eye was that, this death telecastcast live on TV. Way to go reality TV!! It was a horror show live. I caught the melodrama in STAR News and for two hrs the agony and anticipation was keeping the audience on the edge of the seat like no thriller. But at the end of it all, there was no hero to save this poor soul from ending his life. Abdul was sitting on top of a three storey building and suddenly the unimaginable happened. He jumped, pierced through a false roof sunshade and landed on the road into the jaws of death which showed no delay in swallowing him up. The climax was over. Though this time around the police and the fire brigade was well before time but for reasons beyond my comprehension, they proved to be nincompoops, yet again. And what do you think the crowd was doing? Just standing there and watching the fun. Not a single man showed any signs of proactivity. All I ask was, why did we not do anything to save that life? Was our inaction due to lack of equipment? Or lack of will? Or was it pure apathy? Or was it that no one believed that they were about to witness a live conscious attempt to die? Where have we reached? Let me tell you one thing. It takes guts to jump from a third floor. I have taken countless jumps from 10m boards on to the gleaming blue carpet of water in Olympic size pools. The sight from top dries you out. And if that is the case with sporting jumps into water, then how about a painful death starring at you from bottom? It rightfully took a lot of time for that soul to decide and when he did, it was painful to watch.


Reality TV at its best. Death brought to you live at your fingertips. Did I see only death? I did see something more. This is the same crowd, which sees all those masala movies where heroes jump from one building to another and outwitting the rest. This is the same crowd that pays to watch stunts and here it was watching a free show. Not one soul, not even one, showed some ingenuity and courage to stop the inevitable. And donÂ’t even talk about the police or the fire brigade.


The hard hitting reality isÂ…Â…Â….there is no value for life. People would rather watch someone die and channels would telecast even death live to improve their TRPs. But not one soul would be that Indian hero painted in movies after movies after movies. Not in the watching crowd, neither the jumping man!