The Kite Runner - A Review

I just read 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini and I'd like to share my opinion about it. Here is my review of the book:

Khalid Hosseini is a classic example of a successful first-time novelist who didn't just earn the title of an 'International Bestseller; for his 2003 novel The Kite Runner but also managed to amend many a perceptions about the people of Afghanistan with his writing.

Although this book was recommended by a friend, I picked it up with much anticipation as I felt ignorant about the world of Afghanistan and carried very bleak images of the nation in my mind. I certainly didn't expect to come face-on with the softer and much plausible side of the nation often termed as a 'terrorist state' by the global media.

Providentially, the book is very much distant from the Afghan politics but has an edge over other such novels revolving around social stigmas, childhood friends, treachery, culpability, love, and ardor. As I began reading, the book begins with a phone call and so I expected to read what lies in the future but instead, Hosseini very wisely introduces the past at that very moment.

While reading through his childhood reminiscences, I actually felt as though I was watching one of these movies which have a incessant snap from the present to the past and vice versa. In the book, the past revolves around the narrator Amir and his childhood friend Hassan, who loves Amir unconditionally. Hassan always takes up for Amir and protects him from childhood bullies even though he is a year younger than Amir. They are virtually inseparable, until one day when Amir's audacity doesn't match up to his friend's. Their lives are changed forever. The story comes full circle when Amir comes back around to the present, giving a feel as though the story has just begun.

Hosseini has a very articulate writing style which is sparse but effective. With uncomplicated yet effective narration, he makes sure you start living the world you are being introduced to. The end doesn't seem to be rushing towards me, as a reader, which is the case with many a novels these days. Amir's life has its highs and lows, happy and sad times. The lows are given just the right treatment - narrated in a manner to evoke empathy in the reader without making it disproportionately dramatic. The highs, though, are either written in an understatedly style or immediately followed up with hints of impending anguish - statements on the lines of "It made me happy, lest did I know it wouldn't last long." Such mentions made the whole narration seem as if the author didn't want to give allowance for happiness.

Written with a fundamental standpoint of showcasing humanity, the book is often misinterpreted as a story about culture alone, which is a preconceived notion I carried too for a long time until I read the book. The issues dealt with however, are universal like companionship, fidelity, brutality, longing for acceptance, and liberation.

The Kite Runner is a book about love – love that's not confined in narrow labels such as romance. But love as the one power that transfers transgression of the past, love that is candid enough to bring a smile on a face that had forgotten to broaden its facial muscles in a long time, love that is willing to take a chance, again and yet again, to bring back a living dead back to life.

What really moved me in this book was Amir's voice. There were times where I sympathized with him, cheered for him and felt angry with him. Likewise, I became attached to the characters of Hassan and his father. As I read, these characters became real to me, and it felt difficult to put the book down and leave their world.

I believe Hosseini said the right story at the right time, and he told it pretty well. It actually sneaked the reader in the minor personal quibble that is a mark of a masterpiece by a talented writer.

Yellow is the colour of Journalism!

Sensationalism was at its peak during the coverage of Aarushi Talwar murder case in Noida, India. The murder that occurred in May 2008 had become a topic of national interest with the media chipping in juicy details on every development in the story. Indian media had conveniently become the world's leader in yellow journalism then.

Soiled clothes. Bruised knees. Two chocolate bars lying on the floor. A sobbing kid. And in the middle of it, an unstoppable hefty woman barges into the scene. ‘I’m telling you, she has stolen it. Oh, look at her. I’m sure the vendor of the shop where she stole it from hunt her down and beat her. She is a thief,’ the woman yelled, pointing her index finger at me.

I was amazed. My friend and I had had a fight, the one that is mundane for seven-year-olds like we were then. We indulged in a nice break-her-head fight and since she gave up, I got her chocolate bar too. The joy of now owning two bars was overwhelming.

I returned home and did not realise that heaven was to collapse at my arrival. My mother went frantic. “Your knees are bruised. Your clothes are mucky. You look horrible. And two bars? I had given you money only for one. Where did this come from?”

And the hefty woman answered for me. She was my neighbour – Bindra aunty. A ruthless intrusive neighbour, who unavoidably became a part of every conversation at home and blew it out to every person in my locality. She had no idea of what had happened with me and was out to prosecute and judge me for the same. ‘Who the hell is she to interfere?,’ I asked myself.

And thirteen years later, I asked the same question again - ‘Who the hell are they to interfere?’ when the Indian media conducted their so-called ‘media trial’ in the Noida double murder case and led to unrestrained defamation of the Talwar family with heaps of annoying speculations.
From animated dining table discussions to heated television debates and angry editorials, which have held forth on the dark heart of a society in transition. From a character on Indian drama soaps to a B.Ed. question in Lucknow University and comparisons with Jon Benet Ramsay, a six-year-old child beauty pageant contestant in the US, whose murder in 1996 is still unsolved, Aarushi’s murder has run the gamut of a national obsession.

The amount of public attention the Noida case has received from the people is more alarming than pleasing. It reflects the budding sensationalism in the country and the masses feebly falling prey to it.

Yes, the Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj murder case has been blown out of proportion by the media. And to add to it, the ‘media trial’ has been a shoddy display of unwanted intrusion. The “media trial” based on circumstantial evidence and insinuations that bordered on the voyeuristic and the bizarre notions like the father having an extra-marital affair with a colleague and dark hints of wife swapping was incredible. In fact, the term media trial is misleading. It should rather be ‘media exposure’ and the media should confine its role to highlighting the issues and stories instead of trying to be a prosecutor and judge.

Fact and fiction have dangerously blurred in the sensational murder of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar with lurid speculation and slander feeding media frenzy, raising serious questions about professional ethics and media responsibilities. This coverage has probably brought the essence of journalism in dispute. The media coverage of the Aarushi story can be thought to be a part of the larger trend of news becoming entertainment in a market-driven media.

One of the popular hypotheses that has been relayed on news channels ad infinitum and dutifully published in newspapers is that Aarushi’s father Rajesh Talwar allegedly killed her in a fit of rage after finding her in “objectionable, but not a compromising position” with domestic help Hemraj. Taking this into consideration, by the evening, a news channel flashed an explicit video of Aarushi in a compromising situation. The channel claimed that they received an MMS showing the deceased undressing herself. A hand was also visible in the video clip, which was touching her. The video was aired on the channel for nearly an hour. Another channel sent SMSes portraying Aarushi as a sexually active teenager.

I fail to understand the motive behind flashing such a video and sending such messages. Yes, the channels might have earned the Target Rating Points (TRPs). For a sudden instance, all people must have switched to the channel. But is it just for TRPs that a news channel works?
It was an alleged rage killing or honour killing - seductive phrases that became buzzwords in leading news networks - but not many have bothered to find out where this story originated from.

This was the version given by the police who did not think it necessary to do a thorough search of the house of the Talwars on the morning of May 16 after the murder of Aarushi in the night. No effort was made by the police to photograph the site of the murder and no effort was made to fingerprint objects in the immediate vicinity that could have given some clues to the identity of the killer or the motive behind the murder. There is no mention of any confessional statement given by Talwar that would buttress this theory. Yet virtually all TV news channels and dailies have gone to town to cater to people’s thirst for voyeurism and sensationalism.

Ever since Rajesh Talwar’s arrest on May 23, an overzealous and sensational media had speculated furiously on his involvement on the basis of bazaar gossip, leaks, plants, hearsays and other dubious sources. A moment of personal trauma became the object of a nation’s voyeurism despite the protests of the Talwar family and their lawyers. To the question “How will you compensate if the reports are found untrue?”, the media had no answer.

And after defaming and exploiting the vulnerability of the Talwar family for more than two months, large parts of the media have suddenly discovered the pain that the family has gone through and now have unleashed a wave of sympathy that is as unpalatable as its behaviour earlier.

Several Indian news channels like Zee News, Aaj Tak, Headlines Today and India TV with Mail Today ‘broke’ the story that the Talwars were partying till the wee hours of the morning at a posh South Delhi hotel when Aarushi was murdered. It was contended that a dozen or so rooms were booked for the night. The insinuation about what kind of party would need rooms to be booked overnight was clear, if not spelt out.

This story was attributed to sources in the CBI. It turned out to be false. No channel apologised for the lie. Mail Today cheerfully ran the denial the next day without referring in any way to its front page story the previous day claiming exactly the opposite.

Former IPS officer Kiran Bedi comented on this saying, “Everybody seems to be jumping the gun. When Rajesh was in jail, he was the murderer in the eyes of the media and the moment he is out, he has become innocent. The police need to be trained to deal with media pressure. The media is certainly at fault as they took over the investigations and the police could not cope with it.”

When Rajesh Talwar was released from Jail for being wrongfully confined for 50 days after being accused of murdering his daughter, Arushi, it was surprising to see so many media people thrusting their mikes and trying to ask questions when the situation warranted otherwise.
Throughout the case, the coverage has been scavenged on the remains of the truth. CNN IBN carried out a poll on the case and its findings were presented in a discussion that featured people about preaching about the crisis in parenting. Talwar’s guilt was implicitly underlined in such discussions that found place on majority news channels.

NDTV had been the most restrained channel while Indian Express too refrained from riding on the speculative value of the tragedy. A rare moment of grace came in Times of India’s unconditional apology to the Talwars for any insensitivity it might have shown in its coverage.

The double murder case drove so much public attention since probably, Aarushi was perfect for both the middle class and the media – the main source of news, information, gossip and sleaze for them. There were dark hints of sleaze, of orgies, of deviant sexual behaviour, of the romance between a dead teenager and her alleged boyfriend, and even darker hints about a dead teenage girl being found in an objectionable position with her servant by a characterless father.

Also, dozens of Indian citizens – daughters, sons, husbands, mothers and friends – were killed across the country on May 15 this year. To illustrate, in Ballabgarh near Delhi, gardener Lekhraj and his wife Lakshmi’s son – Manish, a six-year-old was murdered. And this is just one murder among the several murders that happened that day. Yet, for the masses and for the media, it was only the murder of Aarushi Talwar and the lurid sensationalism related to it that mattered. It is sad that the callousness in us as the audiences and the media is reaching alarming proportions.

In fact, the Supreme Court had warned the media in late July to be cautious in covering the murder probe of Aarushi Talwar and her Hemraj to ensure that the reputation of the suspects in the case is not tarnished.

The lawsuit was filed by Delhi-based advocate Surat Singh who opened his argument on the lawsuit citing a personal experience regarding the coverage of Aarushi's murder probe. "After watching television reports showing that Aarushi was killed by her father, my own 13-year-old daughter has begun asking me if I too would kill her if she falls in love with somebody," said Singh.

Here was the media peddling the same scandalous gossip being nakedly propagated on the pretext of being custodians of the ‘public interest.’ And here was India obsessed with the wild theories revolving around the murder, with everybody becoming an expert on parenting, on sexual deviations, or the problems of teenage girls with too many boyfriends and on the dangers of teenage girls doing the unspeakable with domestic servants.

The Indian masses are being relentlessly bombarded by 24-hour news channels that are in such a savage race to garner high television rating points that no boundaries or restraints are held sacrosanct any longer. There is a tendency for the news channels to highlight the bizarre to lure viewers and virtually all have fallen prey to this dangerous disease. But then again, it is the same media that has been responsible for the families of victims getting justice in the notorious Jessicca Lal, Priyadarshani Mattoo, Madhumita Shukla and Nitish Katara cases.

Although the Noida double murder was a case of “media overkill” with television reporters waiting almost round the clock near the residence of the Talwars, the media scrutiny was not wholly unwelcome but should be tempered with informed judgment and sensitivity.

The media has to decide at what stage it comes into a criminal trial. Public scrutiny is important but the media can’t run a trial. All the journalists were seizing on every remark and every observation by the police, family of the accused and the deceased and events as they were unfolding. This influences the course of the trial, which is not healthy. How can you indulge in character assassination of a minor girl who is not even there to defend herself? The media is certainly not authorised to issue character certificates. And lost in all this, a bright unfortunate teenager has been long forgotten.

And for the public, it is perhaps fitting to introspect. What made the murders sizzling dinner table conversation for more than two endless months? Were we voyeurs, feasting on the innocuous life and inexplicable death of a fourteen-year-old girl? Perhaps we are all guilty of double standards and not the media alone.