Stardust......

Mrs. Kulkarni was cutting her daily evening sabzi when she brought her daily chore to a magnifying halt. She searched for the remote control and increased the volume for it was her favourite Kareena Kapoor song that had alas come on television after a hiatus of 2 weeks! She once mentioned to me in the subsequent conversation. Like I cared to listen what and how Kareena Kapoor comes after how many days on what screen. She was, as she puts it, a big fan of the star and would do anything to just see her once.

As usual, I was standing in my balcony when she, assuming that I am jobless the way every one does these days, called out for me. I do not like to disappoint people when they have something to share with me eagerly. We get people who can incessantly talk and entertain for hours, but it is a more challenging task to find a person who can boast of a pair of nice and big ears and appetite for listening to others. I lent her my ears. She asked me if I have ever seen her personally and when I nodded in negation she chided me that I go daily to that side of the town. I did not answer that question. I just told her that one of my friends has indeed interviewed her and she is absolutely fair and bright as neon bulb. The latter part I made up a little bit because I did not want to tell Mrs. Kulkarni that her favourite star was any thing but cheerful and vivacious when she met him. I did not want to tell her that she made him stand outside to honour her little missy snob act. Like she did not care who and what scribes are, like she doesn’t want scribes to go after her life and write galore about it.

Frankly, he was dejected with this entire star kid trash. He had been a pretty good actor himself so he keeps the lamp of acting very high in his life. Whenever he hears any star kid reiterating the thought line that “true, we star kids get our breaks easily but we have double the pressure to put up with and are constantly compared to our fine parents.”


He bitterly shared with me one day that how he is sick of such sentences. For him when you come in acting, you come to act with passion and fire to prove oneself and not just become a poster girl or boy for a leading magazine. And if being compared to someone is a more of a pressure than having to put up in a rat hole room with money only for one square food a day and then landing a minuscule role in a movie of a leading actor whose left skin’s hair cannot move as much with expression as that of a lady who had just been botoxed, then he must really be very wrong. One day he had had enough and left his dreams and aspirations lying rotting on the ground. He did not quiet like the idea of being placed secondary to snobs whose facial expressions were as bad as the secularism of Gujarat state. He just left it, and till today he does not regret it.

Mrs. Kulkarni detests, though, the idea of Kareena Kapoor being with a divorced Muslim boyfriend. She asserts that if she is a Hindu, she must also tie the knot with another Hindu. This is her way of leveling the society. Of course, I did not say anything about that either even though she looked at me searching for an answer that would reverberate with her own positivity and judgments. I did not say anything. She also mentioned, passionately, that media must leave the couples alone.

Of course, media must leave the young couple alone. But media, or at least Indian media, cannot hob nob to the foreign shores of Europe of far flung continents where they constantly travel. Where do Indian media get the pictures from? How do they know so much about how and where they eat and what restaurant they frequent? Is it all a deliberate attempt to enhance individual or couple celeb equity? Was it to land, more audaciously, the brand contracts with a lip smacking remuneration?

But, media will not let them alone. In the end, though, it is the media these Bollywoodians need and desire the most. Because not being written about is as good as being written off.

In the meanwhile she also reminisced about how cute Abhishek bachhan is and how old Aishwarya looks with him. How does it matter if Aishwarya is the prettier and more successful of the two? She kept cutting her sabzi while the relay of songs ended. I hurriedly checked my watch and realized that it is time for my cigarette and so I left Mrs. Kulkarni in lurch. I found the packet and checked if there is any one at home. I brought out my cigarettes, puffed the smoke and blew it in air. Desires and pressures in the form of rings got detached from me in the air with every puff I inhaled and exhaled. The higher they went the higher my eyes roved. I looked at them until they vanished as a thin line in the air while the background continued to blare with the song of Chaliya chaliya from the film Tashan picturing the polished and well cut Kareena Kapoor.