Stop Judging, Start Loving, writes Priyanka ChaturvediJan 23(AZINS) Recently, I read about an obnoxious interview on a channel that had gone viral on social media for all the wrong reasons. The outrage, very deservedly so — I say this after watching the interview-— was because of the high moral ground adopted by the interviewer while asking questions to a lead actress of an upcoming movie. Perhaps because the lead actress happened to be an extremely popular porn actress in her earlier avatar made the anchor, in a way, feel superior to her and felt at liberty to ask her awkward questions with regards to her past. He asked her if she regretted her earlier career choice as it has made many lead actors not want to work with her now.

The grilling continued to a point where he asked her if she thought he was getting morally corrupted by interviewing her.

It made me wonder why this condescending questions where she is almost expected to be apologetic about her past. Would the same liberties be taken to interview other actresses like those taken with her? Was it because she had been pre judged because of her earlier profession? Even if we apply the logic it isn’t like she was a convict or a criminal for the arrogance at display with the questions and the rude interruptions at every answer coming from her. By the end of the interview, it became pretty apparent that she was being asked those questions because she had been boxed into the idea of what her career choice was earlier rather than what she was now.

Totally unconnected, but yet, I was reminded of this interview when I read the heartbreaking suicide note left behind by a PhD scholar from Hyderabad University, Rohith, ‘The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. Never was a man treated as a mind…In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living’. Maybe it is time to rethink about our pre conceived ideas and notions about people and situations that we bring into our everyday living.

It happens to all of us, knowingly or unknowingly, where we have judged or been judged even without meeting or interacting but purely on the basis of what we have heard. It brought my thoughts back to the interaction that Rahul Gandhi had with management students in his Mumbai visit last week where he asked the students to not limit their perspectives by the boundaries set by the human mind. More importantly, he said, was to not allow these boundaries to label people. A life lesson not just for our careers but our relationships, too.

Recently, I read about an obnoxious interview on a channel that had gone viral on social media for all the wrong reasons. The outrage, very deservedly so — I say this after watching the interview-— was because of the high moral ground adopted by the interviewer while asking questions to a lead actress of an upcoming movie. Perhaps because the lead actress happened to be an extremely popular porn actress in her earlier avatar made the anchor, in a way, feel superior to her and felt at liberty to ask her awkward questions with regards to her past. He asked her if she regretted her earlier career choice as it has made many lead actors not want to work with her now.

The grilling continued to a point where he asked her if she thought he was getting morally corrupted by interviewing her.

It made me wonder why this condescending questions where she is almost expected to be apologetic about her past. Would the same liberties be taken to interview other actresses like those taken with her? Was it because she had been pre judged because of her earlier profession? Even if we apply the logic it isn’t like she was a convict or a criminal for the arrogance at display with the questions and the rude interruptions at every answer coming from her. By the end of the interview, it became pretty apparent that she was being asked those questions because she had been boxed into the idea of what her career choice was earlier rather than what she was now.

Totally unconnected, but yet, I was reminded of this interview when I read the heartbreaking suicide note left behind by a PhD scholar from Hyderabad University, Rohith, ‘The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. Never was a man treated as a mind…In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living’. Maybe it is time to rethink about our pre conceived ideas and notions about people and situations that we bring into our everyday living.

It happens to all of us, knowingly or unknowingly, where we have judged or been judged even without meeting or interacting but purely on the basis of what we have heard. It brought my thoughts back to the interaction that Rahul Gandhi had with management students in his Mumbai visit last week where he asked the students to not limit their perspectives by the boundaries set by the human mind. More importantly, he said, was to not allow these boundaries to label people. A life lesson not just for our careers but our relationships, too.