I was watching a BBC documentary on Charles Dickens the other evening and was
quite disconcerted to find out things about the man I had once devotedly read
in school. It turns out that Charles Dickens was a very secretive man, who in
the latter half of his life had a mistress, the little known actress Ellen
Ternan. What was disconcerting about Dickens was the almost savage severing of
ties from his wife, who bore his 9 children, that followed once the illicit
affair began.
Dickens however, is revered by the British. It is said his popularity and,
political and social clout at the time was unparalleled. His peccadilloes have
neither marred his image nor toppled him off the pedestal to which a literary
giant like him rightfully belongs. The British are forgiving of their own that
way.
The American media likewise is very adept at creating heros. Just recently,
they've chiseled-out a hero from a relatively unknown man called Barack Obama.
Their heros are not limited to politicians alone. They are routinely in the
business of creating heros chosen from Nascar racing-drivers to basketball
players to movie-stars. There is something in the American psyche that years
and thrives on hero-hood.
Which set me thinking as to why the Indian public seems reluctant to embrace
heroes, post independence. Even our national icons such as Gandhi and Nehru are
now being painstakingly reinvented and cast in a poor light. Other regional
potentials like Dr Oscar Rebello soon find themselves mired in controversy,
either of their own making or foisted onto them. Yesteryear's heros and today's
lemmings. A public's embrace in the soft-glow of luminary light is fleeting and
often ripped asunder even before the sun rises on their short-comings. The
India media rarely plays the role of matchmaker between the public and
hero-worship.
Is it that we are more cynical as a country, perhaps incapable of sustaining
the hero myth given the plurality of our political and cultural ideologies and
regional loyalties? Or are we just bereft of any real heroes in our society
forsaken as we are by our polity and the commercialisation of our artistic
integrity? Perhaps we are just a nation in no mood for heroes. Somehow I think
that leaves us a little impoverished.
selma
