News and Views |
 Kalimpong and the media |
06-02-2007 |
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| Kalimpong, my hometown, has a habit of being in the news for all the wrong reasons. In 2004, when Kohli, murderer of British teenager Hannah Foster was arrested in this sleepy town, we found hordes of TV channels and media men clambering upto Kalimpong in their many satellite antennaed vehicles . Kohli had been masquerading as a “doctor” here and what followed was a media blitz on how the criminal had beguiled Kalimpong for months and had even married here. Kiran Desai, in 2006 , walked away with the Booker prize for “The inheritance of loss” and along with it came a plethora of publicity since much of the book is about Kalimpong- only that it portrays a darker side which is thankfully non existent. Whereas the book is supposed to be a work of fiction, she talks of actual people and happenings without even bothering to use pseudonyms. So Apollo tailors, a well known tailoring house here, becomes Apollo “deaf” tailors only because the old man who owned the shop wore a hearing aid; likewise the late "Fr Booty", a respected Swiss priest whom I had met on numerous occasions as a student is supposed to have had homosexual tendencies. No way! “We in Kalimpong should ,and do strongly object to the falsities on which the plot of the book is built ”- writes Sandip Jain, editor of a local magazine , “one just cannot rubbish an entire society ..because it makes a good plot for a book” “You owe us an apology Kiran” thunders the magazine… All I can say is “Attaboy, Sandip!” |
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