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My office (and I suspect large parts of Mumbai) came to a standstill as the 'very private' Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding unfolded on national TV last week. It was the culmination of a frenzy that has been built over the past weeks, where every little detail of the grand union was highlighted.

Purely for the pleasure, excitement and activity this wedding generated it could be rechristened the Indian National Orgasm!

But why blame the poor TRP-enslaved media only? Retrograde rituals, perfectly-timed engagement announcements or saccharine-sweet testimonials at chat shows and award ceremonies, the Bachchan family and its schmooze brigade have strung a delicate rope through the media's nose and taken it on a merry ride, all the while pleading privacy for a 'personal family event'.

So personal that the bride and groom need Z-level security in a country where countless brides and grooms are routinely maimed and killed (often publicly) for having committed the heinous crime of inter-caste or inter-religious marriage.

So personal that the police apparently rounded up all drug peddlers, prostitutes and eunuchs in the Juhu-Versova locality so that nothing unsightly (rather nothing typically Mumbai) mars this dream-like occasion. Maybe there should be a Bachchan wedding everyday in the city, if only to improve the law and order situation.

And as the city reels under predictions of load shedding, REL blithely promised the wedding uninterrupted power supply. But then, it's just a personal gesture from Anil Ambani to the Bachchans. Who are we to object?

But to be fair to our media, the Ash-Abhi tripe isn't the only thing they've been feeding us. There was the Shilpa Shetty-Richard Gere kiss last week. Morchas were taken out, effigies were burnt and all this was dutifully covered by the media. This kiss is a grave violation of Indian culture, we are told.

The same Indian culture and its zealous vultures were woefully silent at Nithari killings and the rushed verdict of the case incarcerating the servant and letting Moninder Singh Pandher go scot-free. Obviously, child-rape, sodomy, murder and cannibalism are looked upon more kindly by Indian culture.

I probably sound Dickensian in my gloom and doom (sans the literary flair of course) and politically incorrect in the age of Page 3 and Night Out. But I am just another young, hopeful and very worried Indian.

This is the country people are laying down their lives to protect. This is the country whose unsung heroes are running the cogs of daily machinery. This is the India my posh NRI friends are contemplating returning to from the New Yorks and Londons of the world.

A country where merit and truth needs many verifications, but a lie loudly told needs none. A country where the most money is to be made in any venture which includes gypping people one way or the other.

Is hypocrisy to be our only inheritance?