NOSE, LEG AND THIGH

                                                

In course of their stay in Delhi, the English Prince William and his wife Catherine Middleton ( it was larrer’s first visit) saw different historical places including the Raj Ghat. But  on April 11, 2016 while they were offering wreath on the Amar Jawan Jyoti at the India Gate, the skirt of the Duchess of Cambridge went up with the strong seasonal westerly and several smart photographers shot those private moments. One national newspaper gave this visual a lead position on the front page. It has spread like a wild fire and several TV channels are staging debates on the moral norm of journalism.

I am reminded of an incident of mid-1960s, when in a public meeting at Kalahandi in Orissa, a miscreant pelted a stone at Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her nose sustained a minor fracture. There was a great hue and cry, with a wide and blistering criticism of the incident so much so that a section of the press which had earlier trumpeted India as a cultured country for having elected a lady prime minister, lost no time to to go for volte face and declared that it did not smack of any civilized society. I remember that the most polpular English daily of Bihar, The Indian Nation (now defunct) carried an interesting editorial, “Cleopatra’s Nose”. The editor had argued that had the nose of Cleopatra not been that shapely and sensuously charming, Caesar might not have blindly fallen in love and the history of the Roman Empire and for that matter entire world could have been different. Did that hurt nose later turn the sufferer grow  revengeful with her vindictive face in June 1975?

Now a genuine question is what the photographer/editorial team of that news paper intended to communicate to the readers by showing her unintentional exposed lower extremities? In a strong wind, anybody’s (either gender) loose lower or upper garments can go haywire and miss the exact position. Should this ordinary incident of day-to-day life be given this hype? Will a photographer show the same smartness if the lady happens to be his close relative? The flap of the Prince’s coat also went up without inviting any lens.

Let the readers judge the role of the press by asking whether it wanted to show the exposed body of the celebrity or the news that they paid homage to the martyrs? Which  one carried the priority?