Angelina Jolie's Sideswiping Incident: An Indian Perspective
By now you've probably read at least one American media outlet's report of Angelina Jolie's sideswiping of a teenager as she supposedly fled the paparazzi in India, where's she's shooting A Mighty Heart. (If not: Angelina Jolie sideswiped an Indian teenager while fleeing the paparazzi. You're all caught up.) But we find it far more interesting to look at a version of the story from the local Indian media, if for no other reason than we feel like having to puzzle through the occasional foreign word somewhat slows the usual neuron attrition associated with reading about celebrity misadventures. The Indian Express relays the firsthand accounts of both the accident victim and an eyewitness:
The student, Mittal Rawat (19), has reported the incident to the Janwadi police chowki. Rawat told The Indian Express that he was on his way to Vaikunth Mehta Chowk at around 5 pm when the incident took place.
"Two vehicles were also proceeding towards the same direction and tried to overtake me. One of the vehicles brushed against my motorcycle and I fell down. Both the vehicles then sped away," he said.
Eyewitness Nikhil George, a student, said the two vehicles had jumped the signal at the chowk. "Soon after jumping the signal, one of the four-wheelers hit the motorcycle. The rider and a girl riding pillion fell, but had a narrow escape," he said.
Also refreshing about this Indian outlet's version of events is their apparent disinterest in milking a simple traffic accident story because of a celebrity's involvement; while young Rawat's statement that "immediately following the incident, Jolie'svehicle pulled up beside me and my damaged motorcycle, rolled down a window, and she asked how old I was. When I told her 19, she said to the driver, 'No, he's way too old to take home to Maddy and Shiloh. Let's get out of here,' and they drove off. I'm not sure what she meant by that," would have set off a week of cover stories in the sensationalist American tabloid media, the Express let it pass without further exploitation.
