Gossipmongers Inc.

The recent general elections have been quite a starry "tamasha", thanks to our incurable obessesion with Bollywood celebs. Years ago, Amitabh Bachchan had made a bigger fool of himself by jumping into politics than he probably did by donnig that hedious costume in "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom"; his legacy continues in the spectacularly disastrous (non-)performances of jobless actors like Govinda and Sanjay Dutt. However, what is more disturbing than these actors' presumption to represent people whose lives they have nothing in common with is the inordinate amount of publicity that the popular media give these stars. In fact, this is part of a larger cultural trend that involves highlighting a few famous and glamorous personalities rather than issues that concern the not-so-glamorous lives of ordinary folk. Be it film stars or the Next-Gen dynasty kids, it's only a few easily recognizable names that now command public attention, while the rather too familiar and painfully mundane realities of the lives of the masses are relegated to the background. Not surprisingly, pictures of Bollywood stars, fashionably attired in their pristine white chiffons and branded sunglasses and carefully guarded from the "aam janta" by their bodyguards, claim an inordinate amount of newspaper space. And while our film stars pose for photographs as they stand in the queue to cast their glamorous votes, our media experts and political analyists have profound discussions about Rahul baba's next little step towards the Prime Ministerial pram that has been waiting for him since he was half an embryo! So long as the glitter of these stars in the sky continues to fascinate us, we needn't look around at the darkness around us on earth. Or do we?