Omar Abdullah on his divorce with Payal Nath

Some time back, the present J&K Chief Minister and son of Farooq Abdullah (I think this is the introduction), Omar Abdullah joined the micro-blogging site Twitter. I am not sure if he took blessings of Shashi Tharoor, the former UPA minister of state (I think this is not his introduction though) who lost his ministry due to his Tweets (his famous ‘holy cow’ address to the reigning dynasty of India). But Omar seems to have made a quick progress. He has now divorced (I am neither saying Twitter-wallas get divorced, nor that divorcing is any progress) and he is making use of Twitter. I don’t say whether he is using right use of it or wrong, because by the time you understand if it was right or wrong you are either sent packing or forgotten, but I am just saying that he is “using” Twitter. That may sound like a useless usage of use, but I hope you would conclude something only funny after following his adventures with the tweeting:

“J&K CM Omar Abdullah and his wife Payal Nath have separated after 17 years of marriage. This was confirmed by the chief minister on Twitter on Thursday.

Reacting to the report, Omar tweeted: "While it's true my wife and I have separated, speculation about the motives and my future actions are unfounded, untrue, I appeal to the media to please allow me and my family privacy. Am sure you will appreciate that I have not let this affect my work."

"Stories about my remarriage are completely false, concocted. It's a pity, while repeating these lies, no effort was made to ask me the truth," Omar tweeted.

He further added: "My family and I will not be issuing any more statements or taking any further questions about any of this."”

Source: TNN, Sep 15 [Link]

There are many inherent issues here.

First of all, he is speaking all this on such a public platform like Twitter and he is speaking all this on indeed a private matter (divorce). Yet he desires to be granted “privacy”. Even people with no interest in his family life would have got to know about his marital affair (not used in conventional sense) due to his own Tweets. Secondly he claims to have kept his work life unaffected by this separation. What kind of a husband would remain immune to such a tragic happening like a divorce with a wife of 17 years? Thirdly, while he is complaining that “no effort was made to ask me the truth”, he adds in the end that he and his family (excluding his now divorced ex-wife I guess) will not be making any more statements. Forget about making statements, they will not even be “taking any further questions about any of this”! Yet, his complaints persist that the media didn’t ask him “the truth”! Well, for any such matter people are not expected to tell the “truth” and would rather be making political statements. And on the top of that, people of India (of which his home-state J&K is a part of) have given up believing on politicians’ words (I hope he remembers that he is one politician) a long time ago!

I don’t really think his statements and Tweets needed such a serious dissection. But blame Twitter, as even I hang out there some times.

- Rahul