'The paparazzi would spit on her (Princess Diana) to get her reaction for it!...'

25 January 1994 | Ruminations

Diary, Diana, & Dinamani

#memoriesfromdiaries

News of the day - from my personal diary entry - 25 January 1994

Presentiments are strange things! 

These are the opening lines to Chapter 21, in Jane Eyre.

And yes! Presentiments galore great all through the novel!

Earlier, in Chapter 14, she says,

…my tenderest feelings are about to receive a shock: such is my presentiment.

In Chapter 25 again, Jane remarks -

I set out; I walked fast, but not far: quarter of a mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop; a dog ran by his side.

Away with evil presentiment!

Yet again, for the last time, in Chapter 27, Jane quips –

On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself.

I passed it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines presentiment as –

a feeling that something, especially something unpleasant, is going to happen.

Going down memory lane, and looking back in wistful nostalgia at my past diary entries, I now realise how true this word proved so true for Princess Diana – dubbed the ‘most hunted person of the modern age’.

One reason why her elder son Prince William is allergic to any media coverage of him or his family members.

Picture courtesy: Newsweek

What he once said in her interview, could really move our hearts.

He said that the paparazzi would spit on her (Princess Diana) to get her reaction for it!

How shameful an act!

William adds,

If you are the Princess of Wales and you're a mother, I don’t believe being chased by 30 guys on motorbikes who block your path, who spit at you to get a reaction from you… and make a woman cry in public to get a photograph, I don't believe that is appropriate.

Most of the time his mother cried, because of press intrusion into her private life,

he adds.

Right from the time when news of her engagement to Prince Charles was confirmed, Diana was followed by the paparazzi, until the time they hunted her down to her death!

In a memoir titled, Dicing With Di: The Amazing Adventures of Britain’s Royal Chasers, Harvey and his paparazzi partner Saunders, recollect on how they hunted Diana for those sensational ‘million dollar’ clicks of the Princess in March 1994.

Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey were sipping coffee in Kensington, west London.

The pair had spent the day attempting to photograph the most famous woman in the world, without success.

Then Harvey’s cell rang; Princess Diana had been spotted!

Seconds later both of them were in hot pursuit of the Princess, through red lights, driving down the wrong side of a traffic island and accelerating in front of trucks, until the Princess began turning into the entrance of Kensington Palace.

Harvey – leaping out from the vehicle, camera in hand, and dives across the bonnet of the car, firing his camera at the Audi as it disappeared from sight.

“Please, please, let that picture be sharp,” he prays.

It was. Harvey’s photograph of Diana was then sold to the British tabloid News of the World in an exclusive deal, for a fortune!

Well, Diana ‘screams at’ photographer (as I’ve jotted down in my diary), was something that she had to do on a regular basis, day after day after day, all through her life, to avoid the hunting photographers, up until that dreaded day, just three years later, when she was finally hunted down by the same paparazzi!

Again, this act of ‘screaming at photographers’ could possibly be a premonition or a presentiment on the part of the Princess!

Comparing Diana’s predicament with Jane’s – on the topic of presentiment, premonition and foreboding – could yield a range of literary insights and interpolations!

Well, coming back,

Quite coincidentally, in today’s Dinamani, a famous Tamil daily newspaper from the Indian Express group, there is a very thought-provoking article on a similar topic!

The writer Mr. K. V. K. Perumal, a Retired Central Govt Officer, has highlighted on the immense harm caused by the media in damaging people and their reputation by their unverified, inauthentic ‘representations’.

The article is titled, ‘Can a blessing become a curse?’

Says he -

Some people never understand the intensity of pain and mental torture they cause to the people on whom they write and gossip!  Those who find joy in the grief of others are also, in a way, mentally ill patients!

Indeed, freedom of press and power bring along with it a great sense of responsibility!

As the popular adage goes -

The right to swing my arms in any direction ends where your nose begins!

How true!

with inputs from dailymaildotuk and & newsweekdotcom (picture)