The husband is one of those people who thinks 3 Idiots is really to blame for the rash of student suicides in the city. I still think it's coincidence.
May be the film did give two good ideas on how to do it. And then our depressed kids and teenagers went and adopted those two ideas because they had nothing better to do.
While the state government has (finally) decided to review its education system, I do think that if we are to review things that might change this alarming state of affairs (15 suicides in 15 days), let us also insist on a very clinical coverage of things.
Dr Harish Shetty seems to agree with me. He said in a piece written for Mumbai Mirror yesterday that the sudden rise in suicides could actually be attributed to what he terms 'copycat behaviour'. The media should not describe in detail how a particular suicide was committed.
Which makes sense. Instead of your three-column and photograph space in broadsheets or a half-page in tabloids, a brief one-liner should just about meet the case. Such as: ___ was found dead in ____ at the ____ area on ______. Bas, leave it at that. No elaborate descriptions on what the person was thinking, what had happened, how nice the child used to be when still alive, if his parents/ teachers/ siblings/ neighbours/ relatives had yelled at him prior to the death, and so on.
If this is indeed copycat behaviour, and since our kids seem to want to copy even matters of death, let us not have any suicide scenes in our movies, even if those scenes point to a larger picture. May be we could bring back those lovely 'Ek titli, anek titliyan' songs from our childhood so that our kids are exposed only to harmless influences?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
very true, media is behind TRPs these days and they will go to any extent to score those brownie points
Post a Comment