Be afraid. How Sheena Bora-Indrani Mukerjea murder case affects us
Just like everyone else, I've also spent the last few days trying to make sense of the Sheena Bora murder mystery, and been left aghast at the twists and turns, husbands and children, that are tumbling out of the Indrani Mukerjea closet.
Here's a high-profile media personality who's attractive, married to someone ostensibly much older (Peter Mukerjea) and also a media bigwig, and they're living the high life, shuttling between Mumbai and London in between setting up media companies, and that's all we know about them.
Suddenly, she's been charged with murdering her daughter Sheena three years ago (who was first strangulated and then disposed off in Raigad, her body set aflame), and whom she introduced to her husband as her sister her whole life.
Now it turns out, Indrani had two kids (enter Mikhail, protagonist No 2), both of whom she introduced as her siblings. Moreover, she was married twice earlier (to Sidhartha Das and then to Sanjeev Khanna), and Vidhie is her daughter from Khanna (marriage No 2), but has been adopted by Peter and takes his surname.
Also, now there is speculation on whether Das is Mikhail and Sheena's biological father or whether there is a certain No 4 (some Chirag who now resides in Shillong). And to top it all, Sheena was having a relationship with Rahul, Peter's son from an earlier marriage, of which neither Indrani nor Peter approved.
Yes, I can feel a migraine coming on too.
But no, this is not about the case. This is an aside.
Here's a thought that struck me. If Peter is actually as in-the-dark as he says he is, and as dumbstruck as anyone else (he claims he is also learning many of the facts from the media, and Vidhie echoes the same line), then the fact is, potentially, this could happen to anyone - to you and me.
It needn't be our spouses, but who knows which friend or relative or colleague has equally dark skeletons in their closet? Let's not forget, after all, that this is not the trailer of a film, but real life. And it is about people very much within us, and in our society.
So, and God forbid it does, should something like this ever happen to anyone we know, before we know it, our entire digital life will be out there for the world to see. Pictures and videos from our so-called personal social media accounts, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, will be dug out (with hardly any difficulty) and splashed on TV screens and tablets and mobiles (sweat patches, intimate hugs, and all).
So now we have seen personal images of Indrani and Peter, on holiday, at a party, and also pictures of Sheena and Rahul. And, should you have young children, like I do, make no mistake that their identities may be compromised too. One look at Vidhie's selfies and her other pictures that are now everywhere, and you'll agree that I'm not being paranoid.
Unfortunately, we've all lived through Sunanda Tharoor, Aarushi Talwar and now Sheena Bora, and they were all people like us. Time and again we were shown pictures of Aarushi with her friends, up to goofy stuff, and many other personal images; ditto for Sunanda.
Time to up the security settings on your social media accounts or just become extremely judicious about what you post online? You decide.