The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Self-censorship

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Tuesday, Jun 03, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Self-censorship

In a country where cricketers are regarded as demi-gods, whatever they say and do is taken quite seriously by youngsters. That also explains why a good number of brands prefer to rope in cricketers to endorse their products. But, here is a former cricketer who has not taken kindly to the ‘overdoing’ by India’s star cricketer Mahender Singh Dhoni in a TV ad. K. Naziruddin, a former Andhra Ranji captain, has said in a letter that he is shocked by Dhoni’s utterance of an abuse in a TV commercial. “I’m surprised there is no self- censorship for TV ads…Mr. Dhoni deserves to be admonished for allowing himself to be exploited in such cheap and vulgar manner,” he said. Are Mr. Dhoni and TV channels listening?

A different garland

Indicating how price rise has been agitating the minds of women, several women presented garlands made of vegetables to TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu at Putrela during his ‘Meekosam Chaitanya Yatra’. Obliging them, he wore a garland of onions and pointed to it several times to draw the attention of the crowd to the problem of rising prices of essential commodities. Even as he blamed the Congress Government for its failure to check price rise, he counselled the women not to waste the vegetables by making garlands. “Take home these vegetable garlands and use them. That is a wise thing to do, as the prices are so high,” he said, bringing smiles on the faces of every one in the crowd.

A discordant note

It depends on how one defines ‘achievement’. That the word can be characterised in various expressions was evident on Monday when Ghazal Srinivas climbed atop Gandhi Hill in the city to stake a claim in the Guinness Book of World Records. Based on the invitation sent to the media, which said that the “maestro will sing a song on Mahatma Gandhi in 100 different languages”, a large number of reporters attended the event. Even as they settled for a ‘refreshing’ experience, the singer broke into a song in Sanskrit. The tune remained the same when he switched to Hindi, Telugu, English, Malayalam, Marathi, Avadhi… and so on. Realising that the only element of ‘innovation’ was that the singer had the same song translated into different languages had many disappointed scribes scurrying for the exit point. The series of faux pas began virtually with the first line spoken by one of the anchors of the show.

The woman-anchor announced that Srinivas had ‘singed’ the song in many languages and went on to pronounce almost every second word of her speech wrongly. It left much distaste among the audience right at the very beginning.

K. Srimali, G. Ravikiran and P. Sujatha Varma

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Andhra Pradesh