Kindly read this till the end. I have tried to make it readable.
Let's all do our bit for a girl maligned by a huge power she cannot fight back.
Deccan Chronicle wrote:Whine of the Day - Usha Bhagya
She called this morning and screamed, "I hear you are the cheap person responsible for that cheap write-up about my daughter. Where my daughter goes and what she does is no one's concern. And what do you mean by calling her an item?"
Ulta Chor Kotwal Ko Dante... We think Ms. Bhagya should instead thank us for the many things that are not written about her daughter.
Some of the things here are so obvious, it is an insult to the intelligence of people reading these forums to write them, but here goes anyways:
1. Deccan Chronicle has no right to write about where Usha Bhagya's daughter goes and what she does, as long as she is not committing any crimes, or abetting or spawning any.
2. A piece like this in a prominent place in a newspaper read by maybe a million locals is a huge blow to the respect of Usha Bhagya's daughter and her entire family, and for a lifetime.
The general public will forget it by tomorrow, but everyone who personally knows the girl in question, and who knows any other member of that family, will forever remember it.
Forget the crap about how it's been worded. The girl has been basically called a slut in the city's most powerful English medium, with absolutely no reason.
She has a friends' circle, perhaps colleagues at office if she works somewhere, relatives, neighbours, a world of her own. Similarly, her mother, her father, her siblings. She's been slandered forever. They've all been slandered forever. None of them will ever be able to completely get over this.
That write-up there was more powerful than a full page ad in the last page, in terms of how it's been positioned and highlighted.
If you are still not able to understand the magnitude, try imagining your own sister or daughter being written about there.
No really, stop for a bit. Spend some time doing this.
Now slowly think of all the implications for the girl's family and her life. Some projections:
a Think of her mother in every family/social setting henceforth. She's never sure what people are thinking and saying behind her, anytime for several months or years. She can never hold forth when she sees someone doing something wrong, for fear of how they will retort about she watching her own backyard first.
b. Think of her father in office everyday henceforth. He never knows what his colleagues or subordinates are thinking. Just the lowering of self-esteem that happens from thinking that people perhaps think your daughter sleeps around, is a punishment of a lifetime for a man. Nobody ever need actually say anything out in the open.
c. Think of the girl's own insecurity after she gets married. She perhaps has to bring this up with every prospective groom to avoid any misunderstandings later or him finding out from someone else, explaining the whole incident to him. Some will not understand. Some will, but just want to avoid anyone with a slur. And she has to constantly be apprehensive of if her husband will bring this up later in life in a fight.
Again, the important thing: all people associated with her will remember this forever, even if the general public forgets this tomorrow.
There will always be the feeling in the family's minds that perhaps the people they are interacting with are sniggering behind their backs, or pitying them. There will always be that insecurity simmering underneath. They can never be their self-respecting selves for a long time.
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I do not know what happened earlier, but from what I gather from the above and my general opinion of the IQ of the people who fill that last page in DC, basically this is what seems to have happened:
DC wrote some filth about a girl as it does about so many people, her mother exploded on the phone to them (she wouldn't deserve an iota of respect if she did not), and the editor at DC (I think someone called A T Jayanti) decided to put her in her place and show her who she was messing with. So she wrecked that family's reputation in 50 words, in a cheap and vulgar display of huge power.
I do not think the editor would have done it if she actually realized the implications for the girl and her family. The people at DC, alas, do not have that much intelligence. These are the people who actually defended their act saying they did not slander the girl more.
There is a poem in Telugu called "Kanakapu Simhasanamuna Sunakamunu Koorchundabetti". That is what DC today is. People with sub-zero IQ having access to too much power. People who use a respectable medium called journalism and a highly popular broadsheet to settle personal scores.
If there is a God, I hope He forgives them. The price to pay for wrecking a family's respect and a girl's reputation will be too much.
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A REQUEST TO EVERYONE READING THIS
Let's help Usha Bhagya's family in the way you would hope for help if the same happened to you. Let us all rally behind them until DC publicly and unequivocally apologizes and pays damages.
Please do 2 things. Do not put these off for later - there is never a later, you will never return here.
1. Please forward this text to all your friends, and let them write to this address: jayanti@deccanmail.com. Let DC realize that people hit back when it misuses its clout.
2. Please vote in that poll above.
Please do these two right now. Please.
I am no relative or friend of the affected girl. I do not know any of them.
I am doing this simply since I know what it is like for a woman to be unfairly maligned. You never recover. You know people are thinking about it, but they will not discuss it, and you cannot bring it up. Sometimes a lifetime can pass by, and you'll never again know what it is like to have a self-esteem.
This woman's fate is a million times worse. The city's leading newspaper maligned her using prime space. Everybody turns to that page to see the photographs, and they slandered her in a highlighted box right in the middle.
Let's all do our bit for a girl maligned by a huge power she cannot fight back. I believe when we help someone in need, it comes back to us when we need it. And helping someone you do not know rates much higher.
Please forward this, and please vote now. You will never do it later.
If you can take time off and post here, even a sentence, we can make a brute come to its knees.
