Darker revelations

Sir — Mukul Kesavan’s glowing praise of The Namesake (“Small Revelations”, April 19) runs contrary to my impression of the film and Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel. Both the novel and the film depict a highly sanitized version of NRI life, where people hardly argue or lose their temper. The NRI world I knew while working for Asian women facing domestic violence in the UK revealed a starkly different picture. I expected a gifted writer like Lahiri and a talented director like Mira Nair to expose the dark side of this world instead of producing hackneyed novels and films to pamper the West.

Yours faithfully,
Keron Bhattacharya, Nottingham

Great Indian trivia

Sir — It is understandable that celebrity marriages would be reported widely in the media. However, at the same time, such events should be covered with some restraint. The details of the private lives of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai need not concern us. How does it matter if the first person to propose to Ash had been Sabeer Bhatia, ex-hotmail. com chief, followed by Salman Khan and Viveik Oberoi, before she was finally won over by Abhishek? Abhishek too was engaged to Karisma Kapoor, and then dated Dipannita Sharma, among others. Perhaps most Indians will not approve of the Abhi-Ash combination considering their murky personal histories, but who are we to judge them? One hopes that after April 21, this frenzy over a non-event is finally going to end and the media would return their attention, once again, to more important matters.

Yours faithfully,
B. K. Chatterjee,

Faridabad

Sir — The great Indian tamasha around the biggest celebrity marriage in decades has left me totally shocked. The amount of coverage The Telegraph has given to it is amazing. Presumably, the readers must be interested in the Abhi-Ash marriage or else why would it make it to the frontpage every other day? This widespread interest in the marriage, given the sordid drama that had unfolded around it, is all the more alarming. Before the ceremony could actually take place, Aishwarya was sent to astrologers and paraded before deities to purge her of bad omens. She was even married off to a tree! Such incidents would have outraged even an ordinary girl with some amount of self-respect. But the former Miss World and acclaimed Bollywood star complied silently to these senseless rituals. Moreoever, Amitabh Bachchan’s excessive involvement in the marriage was embarrassing, to put it mildly. It was difficult, sometimes, to make out who the bridegroom was: Amitabh or Abhishek? I can hardly recall any comments made by Abhishek about his marriage, whereas his father seemed to have stolen the show from the start.

Yours faithfully,
Deba Pratim Ghatak, Durgapur

Sir — We have heard enough of the Abhi-Ash wedding, which was not only covered with more enthusiasm than required in the print media, but also became the stuff of national television. Since when did celebrity marriages become events of national interest, so much so that they had to be broadcast on prime-time TV? This kind of journalism is a devaluation of the media, which should deal with issues of public interest, and not become a storehouse of prurient gossip.

Yours faithfully,
Moumita Sengupta, Calcutta

Erratum

In “Fusing body and soul” on the Review Arts page of April 21, Kirti Ramgopal has been mistakenly referred to as an Odissi dancer. Ramgopal is an exponent of Bharat natyam. The error is regretted.

— The Editor