May Sunil Dutt's soul rest in peace - despite the 'grief vultures' hovering around his cold and stiff body. I mean the TV crews who were cruising the funeral zone for soundbytes from his many famous friends.
An incoherent Dilip Kumar and sombre Saira Bano are being interviewed. A ticker on-screen flashes - "exclusive to NDTV India".
In a bid to be 'different' Star News merely announces "Sunil Dutt is dead" as the top story and then without telling you how it happened, or a brief obituary of the man - takes you straight into 5 minutes of monologue by Lata Mangeshkar (what a close friend he was, we toured Bangladesh etc etc).
And so it goes. Wonder what it must feel like to be a young reporter whose job it is to thrust a mike into the face of a mourning friend or family member. Can one really go home at night and feel good about what one does for a living?
Is this what the viewers really want? Or just because they dish it out, we watch in morbid fascination...
Considering that a lot of veteran Bollywood actors are now over 70 - and at some time or the other likely to die of natural causes - this is a trend that's here to stay. Jise jaana tha woh toh chalaa gaya. We, the ones left behind, must live with it!
