Bollywood actor Richa Chadha. Instagram/@therichachadha
Those life-changing three words. Not ‘I Love You.’ Enough of that. It’s ‘Galwan Says hi’. Terse, caustic, meant to stir up a beehive. Meant to hurt. Designed for destruction. Once upon a time the greatest artiste of India Lata Mangeshkar stood on a podium in front of Pandit Nehru and sang, ‘Ae mere watan ke logon.Zara aankh mein bhar lo paani. Jo shaheed hue hain unki zara yaad karo qurbani.’
They are all gone, Pandit Nehru, Lata Mangeshkar, Pradeep who wrote these lines in honour of our beloved soldiers, C Ramachandra who composed this timeless ballad to battleground bravery…Kahan gaye woh log. The masters are gone. The memes have taken over.
The actors of today don’t even know the names of the above immortals. They have them in worldview, dipped in no ink of sanctity or veneration. When a young upstart of an actor tells you he has no heroes to emulate, he means he is too lazy/arrogant to look back in ‘anchor’.
Everyone has an opinion. Every Indian with a smartphone is a socio-political commentator. But it is one thing for Ram Avtar Prasad from Rae Bareilly to make irresponsible statements. For an actor, no matter how small or big, it is quite another to shoot off your mouth, hoping for some fireworks.
Why do some actors think they have the right to express their opinion on every topic under the sun, moon and stars? Is this the only way you have to stay relevant? I understand that.Fame is a fickle friend , horribly addictive and deplorably unpredictable.Once you get bite into it you are hooked for life, like the wolf wolfing on Varun Dhawan’s posterior. It gets to you. I get it.
How many pictures of your weddings (presuming you are affluent enough to have multiple weddings) and your receptions and your honeymoons and your baby showers and your tri-annual vacations can you post. Affluence and its demonstration soon begin to look like desperate attempts to stay in the news.
That’s where politics kicks in. Indian politics has so many corners and crevices to penetrate. Kahin bhi pakad lo…you are bound to be noticed. Coming to the by-now viral (if not in any way vital) ‘Galwan Says Hi’ remark, it was meant to generate mischief. It hit home. Richa Chadha is in the news. Congratulations to her.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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