"Please cooperate, madam"

I heard this request made at least 100 times over the four days I spent reporting on the family of K Suryanarayana, the Hyderabadi engineer beheaded cruelly by the Taliban last Sunday.
The day the news of his kidnapping broke, I rushed to Suryanarayana’s house in a city suburb, wondering how awkward it would be for me to meet the family when they must be so devastated.
I was too naïve.
When I reached the house, it was teeming with mediapersons and a bewildered family was being asked repeatedly by camerapersons and reporters to “cooperate” with them and say something to the hundreds of cameras trained at them. “Madam, madam, please, madam, cooperate. Say something. Anything.” the camerapersons pleaded to Majula, Suryanarayana’s wife, who was crying inconsolably and was perhaps getting more flustered with the sea of inquisitive strangers in her house.
I wondered how this regular middle class family was coping with the sudden media attention, their household, their grief being discussed threadbare on national television and newspapers.
Meanwhile, I heard the “please cooperate line” yet again, several times, being repeated by reporters seeking exclusive interviews with the family, with Manjula, Suryanarayana’s parents or his children. The same line was repeated ad nauseum once again for interviews with the second wife, when she surfaced.
I heard “please cooperate” even at the funeral in the cremation ground, when OB vans were parked outside and cameras were recording the last rites and the wails of a heartbroken, devastated family.
I wondered whether the family thought, even for a fleeting moment, that had Suryanarayana not died in such unnatural circumstances, Manjula and the rest of them would have been spared of this public display of a very personal grief.
I still remember the Sunday morning when the news of Suryanarayana’s death broke. I saw Manjula sitting in her own house but surrounded by more strangers than her own family. Did she not wish to sit in a corner all by herself and cry her heart out than being besieged with reporters, now offering their condolence but still looking for information they can use to pad up their copies on how the family received the news of their loved ones death.
I wondered whether she would have still attempted suicide had the news of her husband’s second wife not been made public.
But, most importantly, I wondered why personal space was invaded.
Because, the family was too humble to say no to the media or did not know how to handle it. Because, the media kept asking them to cooperate and that the media attention was in the best interest of Suryanarayana. Or, because, they were ordinary people who had no right to their space, even if they wanted to be left alone to mourn a family member’s death.
I thought of the last reason when Pramod Mahajan passed away a day after Suryanarayana’s funeral. There were no images of a shattered family shot inside their homes or the hospital. Manjula was filmed even in the hospital when she was being given first aid after she gulped down a bathroom cleaning liquid. The media stood guard outside the hospital where Mahajan was being treated. I wondered why they didn’t barge into the five-star hospital and ask the family and the doctors to “please cooperate”.