Thiruvananthapuram: The action of veteran Playback singer Yesudas in deleting a selfie taken by a youth with him and his refusal to join the artistes in boycotting the National Film Awards function on Thursday has set the social media on fire. While a section said that Yesudas was right in protecting his privacy and in respecting the award function, the others took it as arrogance and backstabbing.
Some artistes equated Yesudas to Judas Iscariot, a disciple and one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, who according to the Bible, betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin at the Garden of Gethsemane. However, actors Joy Mathew, Hareesh Peradi and Santhosh Pandit came out in support of the singer. Except Director Jayaraj and singer Yesudas, rest of the Malayali award winners had boycotted the event. This was even after he signed an open petition addressed to President Ram Nath Kovind voicing dissent over his decision to choose only to give away 11 awards. Actress Bhagyalakshmi had termed Mr Yesudas’ decision to attend the event, as cheating and betrayal.
The second incident related to Yesudas took place when he was leaving the hotel in Delhi to take part in the 65th National Film Awards ceremony. As he was struggling to get past a crowd of mediapersons who approached him, a youngster who tried very hard to include the singer in the frame, managed to click a selfie. Yesudas got annoyed and asked the youngster to delete his picture. He went ahead and took the phone from the youngster’s hand and deleted the picture himself. Before leaving the place he said that 'selfie is selfish'.
The youngster who took the selfie with the singer was seen standing with a dejected face It was not for the first time, that Yesudas has come under attack on social media. A few year ago, Yesudas had come up with formal appeal to girls not to wear jeans. This would help them in upholding Indian cultural values, Yesudas had said. Last year also Yesudas had come out against the prevalent selfie culture among the younger generation.
