Why are we not surprised at Mumbai Mirror’s crass headline

Mumbai Mirror has done it again. Back in May, a silly little gossip item on the paper had falsely stated that Buzzfeed Editor Rega Jha was Congress leader Sanjay Jha’s daughter.

Today, seemingly in an attempt to beat other papers to reporting on the Olympic champion PV Sindhu, it ran with this.

Perfect example on how to turn an innocuous quote into a saas-bahu serial dialogue.  

The story is supposed to be an exclusive interview with P Gopichand’s wife PVV Lakshmi, who is a national badminton champion herself. What Lakshmi was really trying to say was that she would have benefitted as a sportsperson if she had someone like Gopichand as her coach: “Sindhu is special because she has Gopi for support. He is her biggest asset. I am not saying because he is my husband but because of the commitment the coach has shown for her. I have no regrets in my career but If I had had a coach as committed as Gopi is, I would have done very well.” 

We aren’t really surprised at the headline, though. Mirror’s article starts thus: “She is not the proverbial woman behind a successful man who tells him how wrong he has been.”

Proverbial woman in the warped worlds of the writer and the copy editor, perhaps.