The irony was stark. All her life J Jayalalithaa had shunned 24×7 media, snapping at Karan Thapar in an interview, “It was certainly not a pleasure talking to you, namaste.” She was a self-declared hater of the limelight, contemptuous of the press, famously slapping criminal defamation charges against a newspaper. She preferred to remain shut away in her shrouded residence of Chennai’s Poes Garden, an aloof Lady of Shalott.
Yet what she eschewed in life, she could not prevent in death as TV crews kept up minute to minute coverage of her deteriorating health, beaming out details of her bodily functions in an invasion of privacy she would have sternly curtailed if she had been able.
Jayalalithaa did not need and had Read More