Please don’t take my sunshine away…

Boredom can become me. I do think that I almost enjoy it, and nope it is not even rationalization. I do wait for days together when I can be so bored. I get angry when others tell me they are bored. I feel insanely jealous of them as well. I mean hello??? How often does one get opportunities to be just bored???

But then too much of a good thing sort of arguments begin to catch up and also inordinate amounts of spent over nothingness doesn’t go down well with pesky people who ask you the mother of all questions, ‘Whassup?’ Errrm, you squirm and come up with the mother of all answers, ‘Nothing, actually!’ The ‘actually’ is the key thing; for me it means that I am conveying to the person, I am happy with all this nothingness… so there!

At one level, is this love for nothingness and at the other end of the spectrum is that boredom at times gets me on an OCD streak. So I will, listen to one song/ listen to one genre of music/ watch one movie or type of movie/ read one book/ eat one type of food/ etc over and over again. This till I obviously get so irritated about my boredom that I decide to not be bored anymore…

So given this declaration of intent for this post, and critical setting of context let me move on. The last week, this boredom made me have this sudden urge to watch movies of all types, I went pleading to all and sundry to lend/ give/ buy me DVD/ VCD’s that I could watch. The most promising haul I felt would be from my cousin with a three year old kid, who did invest a substantial sum in getting movies, which was a way to pacify the nephew. Now I was hoping that I would get my share of Finding Nemo, Pokemon, Scoobydoo and that genre of movies because I was so totally into them for a week. But seems like another cousin had the same idea and borrowed the entire set! Damn! The only available CD with her was the, ‘Inner-Outer World of SRK’ – a 3 part treatise and tribute to the spirit of the star that he is!

I was shocked. I mean someone in my family, someone from the same gene stock invested in buying that?! Why? Why? But, why? I blamed it on the marriage, how that had ruined her… I added that to my, 101 reasons why it was good to be Single rationalization theory!

But I needed to understand her motives, give her the benefit of doubt even. So I asked the question very slowly, ‘D i d y o u a c t u a l l y s p e n d 3 5 0 R u p e e s a n d g o t o a s h o p a n d v o l u n t a r I l y b u y t h a t ? ? ? ? ? ?

The cousin tells me, almost too quickly, ‘Oh-you-know-how-A-is-an-SRK-fan? So I thought, why not! At least it gets him to eat with lesser fuss…’

Now bright kid that my nephew A is, I have never thought he could really tell the difference between his SRK versus Salman versus Aamir versus Blah. To him Shahrukh Khan is a generic name for anything, which goofs, dances and cries on his TV. I have seen him look at just about anyone who gets featured on TV and yell, ‘Sharrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuukkkkkkkkkkkkhhhhhhhhh’. He will look at me part triumphantly for having displayed his genius and part questioningly for confirmation that he indeed has got it right (never mind that I didn’t ask him in the first place). As the indulgent Aunt I just nod and in some way contribute to his delusions that SRK is indeed omnipresent.

Anyway coming back to my shock, I am then thinking, this cousin must be a closet Shahrukh Khan fan. That could be the only possible explanation to this. After all she could have got something featuring AB Baby and told nephew, ‘there that is SRK’ (I mean if parents can tell their children about bathroom monsters, this is a milder lie). And I don’t think the nephew would have refused to eat the meal! But no, she has to go and buy the, ‘Inner-Outer World of SRK’. Horrors!

What is the big deal you might ask? After all he is King Khan or whatever other epitaph he is conferred with! But it does get me into a firmly self-referential mode! I have noticed more often than not, I encounter people who hate him! I would go so far to say that anybody, with whom I have had a meaningful relationship in the last 10 years, hates SRK. Not only does one hate him, they love to hate him as well…

This loving to hate people is a strange thing. There are lots of people who fall in that category. These include people we work with, sometimes family, sometimes Bloggers, but more often than not celebrities. Dislike for celebrities is after all okay. You won’t go to hell for it… or so I think at any rate!

I did a quick poll in office for a free-word association with Shahrukh Khan to see if I just seem to be intuitively attracted to SRK bashers, or was it mere co-incidence? But yes sir, everyone at my work-place also hates SRK!

…Shahrukh Khan? Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
… He hams so much!
… He is so full of himself!
… He forever plays only himself, how awful is that!
… He is so metro-sexual, Bah!
… How could he have agreed to float around with rose petals in a bathtub? Belch!

No, he doesn’t seem to be liked very much… Not to say he doesn’t have fans. Obviously he has very many of them, after all there must be some explanation of all the success that he has managed??!! And given his star stature, one must conclude I know very few people in this world after all! :) Which is not a bad thing after all, considering the difficulty that I have managing this number of people?

But you know how it becomes cool almost to dislike something and some people. SRK, Ash Rai pretty much fall into that category. Yet, it is okay to actually like Govinda and such like people – it’s like they are so uncool so it is almost cool to like them. Though, this quest for uncool people is usually only restricted to Indian celebrities. I mean, tell someone you like Britney Spears or Backstreet Boys – you will get banished from the planet. Why-o-why??

I think, we all love the underdog. We all love rags to riches. We all at a fundamental level - love fairytales. Which is why we love to watch movies like Iqbal and Lagaan, which is so uplifting as a story. This is why we like M S Dhoni and Irfan Pathan. And which is why Saurav’da evokes very mixed responses; after all he is boy with impeccable English accent from Prezi College (I think), so one is not supposed to feel that sorry for him. And it really wasn’t his performance on the field as much as him being treated shabbily by a bunch of selectors that got the entire nation backing him (the same people, who were crying for his blood some weeks back!). Yes, he was the victim and he rose splendidly from that, and news-starved 24-hour news channels beamed that as headlines! So it would seem that the mighty are loved only if they exhibit that they are not infallible! :)

And I think that is one of the biggest reasons why I have never liked incredibly successful actors like SRK and Ash Rai. Because they are not the under-dog. And also there are so many people to love them in this planet; I don’t want to add to that list.

Now I like a whole bunch of really terrible actors, because I think it appeals to either the maternal side in me or the more voyeuristic aspirational liking for Toy Boys. But that is only in my choice of cinematic men I must add quickly, lest the proponents of Indian culture descend upon me! This is why I have never thought much of SRK:

… He is not a terrible actor, so I don’t feel sorry for him in that maternal way
… He is not pretty enough to be Toy Boy
… He is posh Delhi boy with great pedigree (St Columbus, Jamia Millia, etc.), so what is the big deal about his success! And I can’t even be patronizing about him!
… He made it to the cover of Time and National Geographic, so he is no under-dog
… He is primarily a hero of the Diaspora population and that is his calling in life

These are perhaps all of the reasons why he appeals to an entirely different generation of women, much older or much younger than me, while I and my friends mostly snort derisively when he appears with smug smile, sashaying down the streets of Manhattan.

So with much trepidation and amusement I did watch the over three hour’s saga of the man behind the star. And while most of it was very contrived and filmi, there were some interesting moments…

… like his rather feisty 2 year old daughter yelling, ‘Shahrukh is a foooooooooooooooooool…’ We women I tell you, visionary!

… or the rather interesting manner in which he seems to have resolved this whole Hindu-Muslim identity conflict in the context of his marriage. Now some of this might be playing to the gallery, tokenism even, but that he goes to Mecca and teaches his son Gayatri Mantra is a refreshing notion

… that he is very articulate and does this whole self-effacing yet incredibly smug bit… For eg. I am so alone, sometimes I think everyone hates me, but then when I step out of my house, I know that is not the case… Now among other things, that doesn’t mean much but sounds sufficiently cool…

… and that he thinks that his problem is that, ‘My problem is that I feel too much… but don’t think as much’

Ah!

Anyway after the CD was devoured, assimilated and analyzed, I returned it to the cousin. Who decided to quiz me!

And this conversation followed:

She: So?
Me: What?
She: What did you think?
Me: Of what?
She: Of him!
Me: Oh, was okay. Not as bad as I thought. Good to always have rock bottom expectations, you know! :)
She: Uh, huh. You are not a convert yet?
Me: Hell, no! Please, don’t we all need people to hate? Let him be that person for me.
She: I don’t hate anybody.
Me: Ya, right! You have a husband, a mother-in-law, a sister-in-law, a son… so many people to choose from. Whereas me… not too many, so you see…
She: Errrm, isn’t that a little strange?
Me: Really?