Two newspaper items that I read in the last week or so make think. The first one was after it became public that Rahul Mahajan had taken drugs and was having a bash the night before he was to proceed to Gauhati to immerse his late father’s ashes in the Brahmaputra. The drugs bit apart, the fact that he chose to pass the night before such a solemn ritual partying also says some thing. Any way, the news item that caught my attention was former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee commenting that he was after all just a youth and they could make mistakes. Well that was that, if you were youth, it was OK, you could do any thing and kind of get away with it because well… you were young and were supposed to be a no brainer perhaps.
Then I heard about Amitabh Bacchan’s goggles. It is difficult for ordinary folks like me to even comprehend that there are actually goggles in existence that cost around Rs 2 lakh or more. I haven’t seen any, the aviator goggles from Rayban whose advertisements I see in magazines list prices between 3,000 and 6,000. But the fact that such intense speculation goes on whether Bacchan actually bought these glasses and whether an income tax notice was issued to him conveys the fact that he has acquired the image where people find it within the realm of possibility to believe that he might actually own such a product. And Bacchan has to take recourse to a press release to sate that no, he did not have any income tax order or enquiry and that he did not own any such costly sun glasses.
Now whether Amitabh Bacchan bought costly sun glasses or not should be my concern because whatever be the price of the goggles, he bought them with his own money and not mine. But it becomes a matter of concern and speculation because he is a public figure and all this is appearing in the media. And it all looks so obscene. There are figures like Bill Clinton with his Clinton foundation and Bill Gates with his Gates foundation donating billions of dollars in charity in a country which is not theirs ( whether they are doing it for political or business gains is up for speculation but still …. At least they are giving….) and here in India we wake up reading news about Sachin Tendulkar haggling about tax exemptions for his Ferrari so that he can add one more to his already substantial fleet, Amitabh giving press releases about the kind of sun glasses he wears and the country’s elder statesman giving statements that any thing goes if you are young. Clearly, we are losing our sense of propriety some where.
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