Being part of a newsroom that prides itself on the content it produces, I am often embarrassed to admit that my guilty pleasure is frivolous, clickbaity Bollywood gossip of the NickYanka and DeepVeer kind. Who made it to the guest list at the wedding in Italy? How long did it take to assemble Deepika Padukone’s outfit? How could environmentally conscious PC (Priyanka Chopra for the uninitiated) allow firecrackers on her big day?
But as someone who understands that Bollywood and gossip sell, even I find it absurd that something as instinctively natural as a two-year-old clinging to his father on seeing a creature many times his size could make news, that too in a “leading publication” (Times Now group). The two-year-old in question is Taimur Ali Khan – the son of actors Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan and arguably Bollywood’s most famous baby – apparently scared of a cow that came “to say hello to him”.
Is this a result of the rat race among media firms to put out content, any content, at the speed of light, or is it just that we look up to our celebrities too much?
The article ends with this sentence: “Only a few days ago, however, an adorable video of baby Tim saying ‘Meow’ to a cat after spotting it with mother Kareena Kapoor Khan had surfaced online.”
That’s two minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.
