Mumbai: Actress Janhvi Kapoor, who recently attended the We The Women Asia event in Mumbai, called out the insensitive nature of mass media for causing ‘derailment of human morality’.
Speaking about the aftermath of her mother Sridevi and veteran actor Dharmendra’s death, Janhvi criticised the meme trend for making fun of the bereaved.
Sharing that she worries people will think she’s using her mother’s death to grab headlines, she said, “The feeling and the phase that I went through during that time is something I’ll never be able to verbalise. And I think that it was such an individual experience that even if I told y’all everything about it, I don’t know if anyone will be able to relate to it.”
Speaking about how she tries to hold back from speaking about her mother’s death, she adde
d, “I’m always conscious about sounding like I am saying things to get y’all to feel bad for me. I know everyone is opportunistic in nature, and everyone just wants a headline. I would hate if I ever sounded like I was using such a painful part of my life and my relationship with my mother for a headline. That always holds me back.”
Recalling how her mother’s death was turned into a meme, Janhvi said, “But what I will say is that the voyeuristic nature of journalism today, of media culture today, of social media today has single-handedly contributed to the complete derailment of human morality. I am seeing it more and more every day, and I think it was horrible when I lost my mom.”
Talking about Dharmendra’s death, she added, “I don’t know if anyone can imagine what it’s like to lose someone that close to you and see it become a meme. I don’t even know how to compute it, so I don’t know how to explain it. But it’s just gotten worse. We saw what happened with Dharam ji. It’s happened repeatedly before that, and I’m sure it will only get worse.”
Sridevi died in Dubai due to accidental drowning in a bathtub on February 24, 2018.
Dharmendra passed away on November 24 in Mumbai.