Every one wants to be linked to someone famous so that some of the glitter gets rubbed off on them – that’s why Pg 3 is doing so well. Here the nobody makes an effort to join the rarefied stratosphere of the somebody. However in India there is another trend that is being noticed. Nobody's are including somebody’s in their everyday life for the same reasons. A case in point is the twist given to the predicament of Sunita Williams - the US astronaut stuck in space.
School children from unknown villages hold her mugshots and pray for her ‘safe return’ and the newspapers print this snap the next day. Well from this you could say that the Indian government's efforts to make accessible information technology to everyone has been successful but the truth of the matter is that some unknown school gets a photo in the papers by praying for a person lost in space.
No not just another person – a person who was once upon a time an Indian and through no fault of hers was born in the US – blame it on her parents who hoped to find greener pastures across the seas. This need to include famous people who are no longer residents of India into our everyday life stems from the fact that India does not have heroes of her own, that’s another reason why we also harp about the glories of ancient India. It’s easier to draw a connection to someone famous than to ensure a road to success.
The kind of heroes that are chosen also suggest a bias. No body in India holds a candle to Freddy Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, educated in a school outside Mumbai India, maybe because it was not infra dig then to search for Indian links or maybe because he was a gay rock star who died of AIDS.
The way things are going we will pretty soon be garlanding apes (our forefathers) for having cocked-a-snook at the food pyramid and for staying awake for the dawn of a new civilisation.
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