The real India

So I read in a newspaper today that a man in a remote district of Tamil Nadu married a bitch yesterday. Big deal, you must be thinking. A lot of people do that right? Well think again. He married a real four legged bitch. And the article goes on to say what a grand wedding it was, and all his village was present at the ceremony it seems, complete with a grand feast at the end. Disgusted? I am.

The article goes on to say how the man Selva had in his youth, killed two dogs, and in an act of intrepid stupidity, hung their carcasses from a tree. Within a year, he suffered from partial paralysis and lost his hearing too. Plagued by health problems incessantly, it was a mighty sad life that Selva led. Until an astrologer came with the perfect antidote for all this...to cleanse himself of the sin, marry a dog. Selva agreed wholeheartedly, and hence all this.

The wedding, apparently was presided over by all town elders. They draped the bitch in a silk saree and Selva took an oath to keep his better half happy. This act was covered by NDTV, Mumbai Mirror, and all leading southern newschannels and papers. It is with great satire that this article was reported in the Mumbai Mirror. Somewhere, something is missing. Shouldn't people be disgusted and appalled by all this? Who are these 'town elders'? Does nobody in that village have common sense? Are we supposed to sit back in our couches at night and laugh at this spectacle on TV? Or is it supposed to be our morning quota of newspaper humor?

Who needs serious help here? That guy Selva? Or the prescient astrologer? Or the entire village which was a party to all this? Definitely the media too, which, in a frenzy to report, has left its own morality and brains behind a long time ago. If you threw your head back and laughed at this, you need help too.

It is unimaginable, the amount of ignorance, illiteracy and poverty in a region which would lead to something like this actually happening.

So on the one hand, we have Yuvraj Singh getting a crore for hitting six sixes in an over, we have prominent ministers proclaiming modest assets worth tens of lakhs, we have Mukesh Ambani as the richest person in the world, we have Sunita Williams lecturing in IITB about how to dream big, and we have movies like Om Shanti Om made with a budget of crores.

And on the other hand, we have a poor illiterate man marrying a dog because he thinks his health will improve. And we have a woman in Raipur killed, because people suspected she was a witch.

Which is the real India? Is our version of modern India as fake as movie stunt glass made of candy?

Maybe some things in life can't be understood. For better or worse, our country and the people within fall in that category. Anyway, best compliments to Selva and his bride on behalf of the entire country.