Take two

Why Ram Gopal Varma is Right

Madhavankutty Pillai | 08 Jul, 2011

The shallowness of the outrage over Maria Susairaj

Ram Gopal Varma touts a pidgin pop Ayn Rand-Nietzsche philosophy, which, in his understanding, means being unashamedly self-centred. And so, his Twitter and blog followers are showered with abuse but like masochists keep coming back for more. On the other hand, he publicly sucks up to big film stars. If we didn’t know his fondness for women, you would think he is courting Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan on Twitter at the same time—‘Nvr bn jealous of evn the guy who made luv 2 the woman who I desire most bt am jealous of poori fr showng B btr thn wht I did in my 6 films’, ‘Never belived in Ram Jesus or Allah bt cing the variation cmng frm js 1 man frm lagaan 2 Tzp 2 DB I am seriously cnsdrng believing in Aamir’.

From such a man, it’s difficult to take anything seriously, but on the question of Maria Susairaj, Ram Gopal Varma is the clearest voice of reason in this country. Maria, an actress, watched and helped as her boyfriend, Emile Jerome, cut Neeraj Grover’s body and disposed it. Last week, Susairaj came out of jail after having served three years’ time for destruction of evidence. She immediately held a press conference at which her lawyer flaunted photographs of the body to show that it had not been cut into 300 pieces as had been reported. Everyone is outraged at the temerity of it.

But ask yourself this: there are thousands of murders happening and if the only reason why this broke into the nation’s consciousness was because the body was cut into 300 pieces, then why is it wrong for her to defend herself on those parameters? Consider Barkha Dutt’s comments on her show—along the lines that the discussion about whether it was 300 or five pieces was an affront to human dignity. But the very reason that the show was even being done was because the body was cut into 300 pieces.

The greater crime in this is the murder and not the cover-up. But since outrage is in fashion nowadays (and good for candle sales), everyone has decided on exactly the opposite. At a subconscious level, a few people get this contradiction, but their delusional way to deal with it is to turn Maria herself into the killer with Jerome helping cover it up. Sherlock Holmeses (if that’s the plural) cracking cases through newspaper reports.