Grief Vultures at the Kathmandu palace

A version of this article appeared in Nepal Times Weekly

Grief Vultures at the Kathmandu palace

I have seen `hungry` shutterbugs before... but always a respectable distance from people in sorrow. But the `grief` vultures present that day displayed no sense of propriety, or respect for the mourners. TV and other cameramen zoomed in on any teary eyed face in the line.

I was standing in line in front of the royal palace gates the first day the condolence books were made available for the public. A little before eleven, the gates hadn`t opened, but the serpentine male and female lines were already growing by the minute. There was a brood of media people crowded right in front of the gates. The TV cameras were panning up and down the length of the lines, seemingly on the prowl for a grief-stricken face... tears... a good sound bite.

I have seen `hungry` shutterbugs before... but always a respectable distance from people in sorrow. But the `grief` vultures present that day displayed no sense of propriety, or respect for the mourners. TV and other cameramen zoomed in on any teary eyed face in the line. Right at the front of the line, underneath the parapet, was one pretty teenage girl with tears lining her eyebrows clutching two roses in her hands. The shock and grief she probably felt at the macabre murders of the entire royal family seemed to be writ all over her face. She kept her face averted from the prying cameras, but they wouldn`t leave her alone.

A couple of the cameramen brought the camera lens, including the large video camera, up to two inches away from her cheeks. Zooming in for the `kill`, a sure-shot footage for the evening news. They pointed the camera downwards, almost touching her shoulders, for an extremely close up shot of the roses she wanted to offer to the late royals. The next day major international dailies carried a picture of the girl with tears and roses.

Whenever I have seen pictures of such grieving men and women in the papers and on television, I used to assume that the cameramen would have clicked shots from a respectable distance, with zoom lenses, without intruding up close on a moment of private grieving. Now I wonder. Did the cameras swoop down that way to prey on the raw grief of the survivors of the Gujarat Earthquake, the funerals in Palestine, or the mothers holding emaciated children in Africa?

Even as an alert and aware citizen, I could not do anything as I watched the emotional exploitation wrought by the media people on that vulnerable sad girl at the Narayanhiti Palace gates. The anger, the humiliation I felt was all swamped by the immense helplessness that was part and parcel of the emotional turmoil. I couldn`t react or retaliate. I bet she couldn`t either. My grief too became a subject for one cameraman... but one who kept his camera a respectable distance from me.

A great sense of loss and melancholy was overcoming me as I waited in line. The closer I came to the gates, the greater the sense of loss, and the greater the impact of the senseless and incomprehensible massacre of the royal family by the crown prince. When my mother in law, after acknowledging the finality of the tragedy by signing in the visitor`s book, came and hugged me and cried, my own floodgates of grief spilled over. As the tears just flowed, a television crew from India homed in for the kill. "Can you tell us how you feel?" they came to ask me with their mike outstretched. I felt like shouting at them to leave me alone. But I couldn`t. All I could do was to was shake my head vigourously and whimper out a "I`m sorry, I can`t speak" through quivering lips.