31.8.15

Murder, she said -- Sheena Bora vs. Indrani Mukherjea


When a murder case is described as a circus, an edge-of-seat drama, you know that nobody is interested in the dead. It is the killing that counts, especially if it takes us through a maze.

India is riveted by the daily assault of media stories on Indrani Mukherjea, the woman who killed her daughter (who she publicly referred to as a sister) back in 2012. It has been brought to light three years later; the reason for it is confined to footnotes when it ought to be the real news.

DNA

Briefly: Indrani married Peter Mukherjea, whose son Rahul from a previous marriage was in a live-in relationship with Sheena, daughter of Indrani, who also has a son Mikhail (introduced publicly as her brother).

An informant told the police that Sheena had been murdered. This led to the driver, who confessed and accused his boss Indrani and her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna of the murder. Sanjeev and Indrani have a daughter Vidhie, who Peter legally adopted. The father of Sheena and Mikhail is a Siddharth Das whose mother says she can only vouch for one grandchild, i.e. Sheena, and not Mikhail. (Who named him Mikhail? Clearly somebody must like Gorbachev.)

There is bound to be confusion, what with all the players contradicting one another and themselves.

However, due to the sensational nature of the disclosures and the surge of pop psychology doing the rounds, the fact that the police in the forested area where the remains were buried did not pursue it should be alarming. Nobody seemed to know or care about her disappearance in all this time, including her fiancé, her brother and her grandparents.

But, it is also about how society does not care. The manner in which people are reacting too reveals little concern for the victim. And if there is, it is to judge the non-existence of moral values.

I have a vague recollection of Indrani as a Page 3 denizen. She and Peter, who was the CEO of Star India, were obviously party animals. Later, they started another channel. Now Vir Sanghvi, senior journalist, has given an interview about his ex-bosses. I don't understand this. If he does not have any clues about the murder, why should he be allowed to barf about what are essentially his peeves against them?

In the initial stages, I watched a high-society punk on two TV channels. It was amazing how he altered his tone to suit each channel's story, and the channels are playing favourites here too.

I fail to understand how these ‘friends’ who say they can't believe such a thing could happen are called upon to judge precisely that. Far more important than the motive, it is for the police to establish that a murder did indeed take place, and the identity of the victim. Right now, they have exhumed the grave and collected a bagful of bones and a skull.

We read this and write about it as though these are things we encounter regularly. The reason we are becoming desensitised is because of the inhumane nature of reportage. The emphasis is on the uber lifestyle. For the middle class, it is a story close enough but certainly not about them. They can, therefore, judge, be it the money angle, the lust angle or the power angle.

Let us pause here. We do judge all crimes and criminals, so why not a woman who has from all evidence produced thus far killed her daughter, a planned murder, wiped out all visible clues, and lived with this and other lies?

The feminist trope has become mandatory when discussing any public event or cases these days. So, some commentators tell us that it is wrong to diss Indrani by referring to her as ambitious or a femme fatale. There is nothing wrong in being either. I do see that such slotting might convey that a woman with drive is bound to clear whatever comes in the way through any means. It so happens that Indrani did indeed do all of these. Her gender is immaterial.

I read a piece where the writer was angry about this and went on to list quotes not only about this case, but two other publicly visible women, thereby drawing attention to what she was herself dismissive about. While it is a fact that a woman with more than one husband draws attention and sniggers, here these gentlemen were very much a part of the crime, either directly or as evidence.

Some part of her lifestyle will be highlighted for the same reason as some are now talking about how the dynamics might change after the revelation about her being abused by her father as a teenager. Are we going to justify her crime because of it? If we think he is a beast, then should we trust him to shed light on the case?

The driver was an important part of the crime; there is little attention being paid to him. Why? Because we do not have pictures of him holding a cocktail glass? I am curious as to why he had preserved Sheena’s photograph (supposedly to identity her just in case the killing was outsourced) years after the murder? Wouldn’t he have wanted to get rid of it?


What prompted the informer, who woke up after three years?

What intrigues me most is Peter, who appears to be given the benefit of amnesia. He does not seem to know about anything and has portrayed himself as a lovelorn man who only trusted his wife, and did not seem to know about anything, including her being the mother of these two children she called her siblings. He says he has never met her parents, either.

Since we do not know how well she knew his family, is it possible that they functioned as a supra nuclear family? They weren’t very young, and had experienced previous marriages. The term “delusions of grandeur” has been used for Indrani. It is possible that this was a delusional compact world they chose to lead, where ‘others’ were not admitted as more than passersby. He probably believed her because he couldn’t care less about another version, just as she probably trusted him for other things.

I am surprised that people are shocked not so much by the murder as by the relationship. These are the same people who are quite okay with discussing minutiae of their own ‘happy lives’ in private messages to strangers on the internet. Therefore, nobody is in a position to discuss the dysfunctional.

As regards the crime, usually we say there should be justice for the family. Isn't that redundant here?

16.8.15

The lion and the vultures


How different are the two pictures really? In one the man poses with his kill; in the other the industry caters to consumerist bloodthirst that feasts on the same kill.


I'll be honest. I found the moral high ground on the Cecil the lion story hyperbolic, and in many ways a pretence. And it had nothing to do with it overturning the fairytale where the ogre is the beast. There was just too much of reductionism going on — of race, of bestiality, of the hunter as sinner.

The American man who killed a lion in Zimbabwe became a villain everywhere; to boot, a white with a whiter smile. One news report even spoke about how it was discovered that the killer of Cecil "turned out to be" an American dentist. How was this a discovery or of any consequence?

Hollywood's avande garde voice and general conscience-keeper was so riled that she even posted the address of Dr. Walter Palmer's clinic. It became just another, what we Indians call, jungle raj.

It is important to question such trophy killing. We need to forget one ism to favour another in some cases, so not all animals are equal and indeed we would need to understand that animals in the wild play a different role. However, if we are going to talk about sensitivity, then why is it that we don't ever evince any such sensitivity when we see stray dogs rounded up in municipal trucks?

Now, there are Cecil memorabilia. It is not an environmental consciousness initiative but a commercial enterprise. Is Cecil the first one one to be ever killed? How did the "local favourite" become the pop favourite globally? Can people really tell one lion apart from another?

Instead of buying mugs and other paraphernalia with a lion face, perhaps we should all just stop visiting zoos, which is where the animals are slowly reduced in stature and where we learn how to recognise that what's behind a cage should be naturally game outside of it. 

15.8.15

We, the little people



I can understand the usual speeches of politicians, but what makes us repeat the same old songs again and again as evidence of our patriotism? When will we get out of our gramophone existences and understand that a democracy thrives, in fact exists, because we need to question everything that appears to be free.

Our so-called nationalistic safety nets protect us from much of reality.

***
Let me post something I had written elsewhere back in 2009 about just such a reality:


Last year I was involved in a slum project in Delhi. It was late evening by the time I finished the rounds. The group of hutment dwellers took me to what was supposedly the best little house in their midst.

They pulled out the only chair there was for me and this is what I saw on the wall:

The man of the house had no legs. He slid in on a make-shift 'cart'; his wife stood proudly next to him. I asked about the pictures, "What do all these have in common?"

He laughed and spoke in halting Hindi, "Kuchch nahin, lekin sab ko respect karna hai (Nothing, but one respects everyone)."

A whole lot of people had gathered in that little room, some spilling on the doorstep. Someone bought a cola for me. I was asked not to leave without having dinner with them. It was a touching gesture. I said, “Next time” and just so that they did not feel bad I started discussing the nuances of various uthhappams.

It was a South Indian family. I tried my little Tamil with them to much guffaws all round.

And then of course as I was leaving I said, with complete idiocy, "Vanakkam". It means welcome.

I may never meet them again, or I may. But even in that faux pas I think I had welcomed them into my little world as they had welcomed me.

They were fighting to preserve their homes that were going to be bulldozed. I have found out that they have won the case. I smile at the memory of that wall. I can only hope that walls too have memories.

***
Politically speaking, only walls seem to have memories.

As all the usual groups get celebrated on Independence Day, let me just sing for them the songs they won't hear:

"Ai mere watan ke logoun zara aankh mein bhar lo paani, yeh shaheed hue hai unki zara yaad karo qurbani..."

"Saare jahan se achcha Hindostan hamara, hum bulbulein hai iski yeh gulsitan hamara..."