On Sunday, December 7, Smriti Mandhana issued a public statement saying that her wedding had been called off and asked people to respect her privacy and that of her family. Shortly afterwards, Palash Muchhal did the same. I am absolutely not concerned about what transpired, or who is right and who is wrong. What led to this isn’t my concern at all. What is concerning, however, is that both of them had to issue statements under extreme social media pressure.
A man and a woman, for whatever reason, have decided to call off their wedding. When you think about it, the matter is extremely painful and sad. And in all honesty, it is a deeply private issue. No one — absolutely no one — should have anything to say about it, and yet it became a national soap opera of sorts, with the two of them having to release public statements within minutes of each other.
Let’s be honest with ourselves: this can’t be the price one has to pay for being successful. Smriti is successful in what she does, and that’s why her private life has now been turned into an open book. Senior journalists have posted crass tweets, social media has gone into a tizzy — all because people want to know what happened between her and her former fiancé that led to the wedding being cancelled.
The truth is, we should be concerned with what Smriti does on the pitch. We should be interested in her game, in how the World Cup win has changed her life, and what she plans to do with Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) next year in the WPL. That’s the public part of her life, and that’s where media interest should lie. But now that has become secondary. More than her game, the details of what happened that led to the cancelled wedding are trending on social media.
The Smriti issue says a lot about the kind of society we have become. It shows what sells and what we have reduced ourselves to. How peddling gossip has become the new normal — and if you don’t do it, you aren’t “cool”. Instead, you’re old-school and stupid. So what if it hurts someone’s sentiments? It’s sensational, and it’s about a national celebrity — how can we not gossip about it?
Smriti, may I say, was almost forced into issuing the statement. She had kept quiet all this while, and yet speculation continued to build. She became the subject of roadside gossip, and that may have compelled her to put out the statement to shut things down. We must understand what she must be going through and respect it. We must recognise that dealing with this couldn’t have been easy. That alone should urge people to show restraint — to stay away and let things be.
I have said this in the past and I say it again: the line has been crossed in the Smriti Mandhana issue, and we as a fraternity have let ourselves down. With social media having entered our bedrooms, this could well become the norm in the future.
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