Love stories

The grand passions of the last generation of stars seem to be a thing of the past

So, Jennifer Aniston is single again – a few weeks ago she and her husband Justin Theroux put out a joint statement to say that they have decided to separate. Cue, a hundred thousand violins screeching sadly across the globe, to provide a musical counterpoint to our collective cry of ‘Poor old Jen’. 

Yes, again. Poor old Jen! The phrase that first reverberated through the world when Brad Pitt left her for Angelina Jolie; the words that were used to describe her as she went from one doomed love affair to the other; they were pulled out yet again as another Aniston marriage came to an untimely end.

And close on the heels of the ‘Poor old Jen’ pity-fest came the ‘Jen and Brad forever’ narrative. After all, the argument went, both Aniston and Pitt were single now. He had been dumped by the femme fatale he left his wife for. So, what better ending for their love story than that they reunite – this time for good.

It mattered little to media outlets and fans on Twitter that Jen and Brad have long since moved on from their starter marriage. It’s been more than 12 years since they were last together and in that time period they have (between them) notched up two spouses, six children and three – or is it five? – boyfriends. 

But who cares about that? As far as the world at large is concerned, the Jen-Brad love story is one for the ages. And it seems blatantly unfair that it should end as it did. (Of course, there are as many people who feel the same way about the ‘Brangelina’ story and are waiting with bated breath for a reconciliation. But that, as the saying goes, is another story.)

What is it about some relationships that they capture the public imagination so vividly? Or, in other words, why do we get so invested in some love stories, though the principals are strangers to us and likely to remain so? Why do some lovers inspire us so that we cannot let them go, even long after they have left one another? 

I first remember asking myself these questions when that great screen and stage actor, Richard Burton, passed away in 1984. When he died, he was married to his third and last wife, Sally, and it had been eight years since he broke up with Elizabeth Taylor, his former wife (twice-over; they married, divorced, remarried, and divorced yet again). But if you had gone by the media coverage alone, you would have thought that it was Liz Taylor, not Sally, who was the grieving widow. 

Much the same thing happened when Taylor herself died in 2011. She had been married eight times to seven men, and had acquired and lost two husbands after she divorced Burton the second and last time. But her obituaries concentrated not so much on the many husbands or her four children, but on the great love of her life, Richard Burton, who wrote her those amazing love letters, bought her the most spectacular jewelry, and loved her to his last, dying breath.

Closer home, you can see the same phenomenon at work. Catch any film awards show and you will find that as surely as night follows day, the camera will pan to Amitabh Bachchan in the audience when Rekha is on stage (and vice versa) to get a ‘reaction shot’. Sometimes it will pan a little further to focus on Jaya Bachchan, as she sits poker-faced, knowing full well that the slightest grimace or frown will launch a thousand gossip items.

Watching these shows, it seems hard to believe that the Amitabh-Jaya-Rekha love triangle ended about two decades ago (at least) given the iron grip it still has on our fevered imagination. 

It says something about how fleeting and ephemeral the relationships of today’s stars seem by comparison that we really don’t feel too strongly about any pairing. Does anyone really care that Deepika Padukone had moved on from Ranbir Kapoor and is now dating Ranveer Singh? Does anyone even remember that Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan were once an item? And despite the media’s best efforts to whip up some hysteria about ‘Saifeena’, the Kareena and Saif Ali Khan coupling didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

The only love story that has come close to capturing the public imagination in recent years is the one between Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli.  And that may well be because between the two of them, they covered the two great passions of Indians: movies and cricket. So, their star power expanded exponentially when they came together, and set the world aflame. 

But that’s as far as grand passions go for this generation. Other than that there’s really not much to get too excited about, with the same names hooking up and unhooking from one another in an endless round of romantic musical chairs. 

So, what explains the difference? Is it that the celebrities of today no longer have the same oversized love stories like their predecessors did, so they fail to light up our collective cerebral cortex? Or have the stars themselves lost their lustre in a world that moves on far too quickly to the next glittery thing? 

I really don’t know what it is. But I do know it is something I will be thinking about – especially once the award season gets going, with its hardy perennial of the ‘Amitabh-Rekha-Jaya watch’. 

Ladies first

Young girls these days are spoilt for choice when it comes to role models

There is not much about the young that arouses my envy. I don’t grudge them their top-notch metabolism, their wrinkle-free complexions, their insouciance that all will turn out okay, or even the fact that life is full of endless possibilities for them. That’s because I was young once myself, and I know what a tortured time this can be for most of us.

This is an age when we are yet to get truly comfortable in our skin, no matter how firm and unpigmented it may be; when we are tortured by the spectre of failure as well as dreams of success; when we feel things so deeply and viscerally that it marks us for life. This is a time when the best of us are often reduced to emotional wrecks, tossed on the waves of our hormones and the moods they induce.

These are only some of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to relive my youth, for all the money and anti-ageing face-cream in the world.

But there is one thing that I do envy about the young girls growing up right about now. And that’s the fact that they have so many positive female role models in the world they live in. Growing up, my generation had to be content with such stock figures as Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa. But while these were towering and inspirational personalities in their own right, they were not relatable in quite the same way as the female role models of today are.

And they are everywhere: from sports to arts; from politics to business; from the movies to the media. Wherever you look, there are strong, brave women taking on the world – and winning.

Let’s take sport, to begin with. Yes, we had P.T Usha and Ashwini Nachappa, both leading track stars of their time. But that was about it. There were no tennis or badminton stars on the international circuit who looked like us. And few of us even knew what our female cricketers looked like, though we may have been familiar with Diana Edulji’s name.

How things have changed since then! Sania Mirza has been a bonafide international tennis star for nearly a decade now, winning international titles and endorsements deals with equal elan. Badminton champion Saina Nehwal has won over 20 international titles, an Olympic bronze medal, and attained number one ranking in the world. Somewhere along the way, she has managed to find the time to become brand ambassador for a range of companies as well as for the Government of India campaign to promote the girl child.

And now we have a new stable of stars in the Indian women’s cricket team, all of them with inspirational stories behind them. There’s Mithali Raj, best-known for reading Rumi on the sidelines before she lights up the green with her fiery shots all across the field. And keeping her company are such stalwarts as batting wizards Harmanpreet Kaur and Punam Raut, all-rounder Deepti Sharma, and fiery fast bowler Jhulan Goswami (no relation, alas!).

A quick look at the movie business also gives us hope. Gone are the days of heroines who hid behind Mummy’s pallu or depended on their ‘Godfathers’ to shore up their careers. Today, the film industry is full of independent women, who have succeeded by dint of their own efforts. These are women who make their own rules rather than play the roles prescribed for them. Whether it is Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra, who left the security of Bollywood to make a splash in the West, or Kangana Ranaut and Anushka Sharma, who revel in their ‘outsider’ tag and create their own opportunities, the landscape is heaving with female stars who are not just strong and confident but also secure in their self-belief. And these are qualities that every young girl can aspire to, whatever career she chooses.

The banking sector is as rich in female role models as it is in term deposits. The largest bank in the country, the State Bank of India, is headed by Arundhati Bhattacharya, the first woman to be appointed to that role. Chanda Kochchar is the managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank, the second-largest bank in India (and the largest in the private sector). Shikha Sharma is the managing director and CEO of Axis Bank. Naina Lal Kidwai is the country head of HSBC India. Kalpania Morparia is CEO of J.P. Morgan, India. I could go on, but you get the picture.

The media landscape is also dotted with strong female figures. While NDTV gets the credit for producing the largest number of female stars – Barkha Dutt, Nidhi Razdan, Sonia Singh – others news channels are now fast catching up. Navika Kumar rules the airwaves at Times Now while Mirror Now’s Faye D’Souza is fast carving out a place for herself in the overcrowded media landscape. And then, there’s my friend, Priya Sahgal, whose discussion programmes on NewsX are an island of sanity in this era of outrage-fuelled TV.

Publishing is also rapidly being overrun by women bosses: Meru Gokhale at Penguin Random House; V. Karthika and Sudha Sadanand at Amazon Westland; Diya Kar Hazra at HarperCollins India; and Chiki Sarkar, who heads her own start-up, Juggernaut.

So, if you are a young girl growing up right about now, what do you see around you? You see strong, capable women, following their dreams, working hard, creating their own path, and enjoying the journey. And it gives you hope – even the certainty – that you can do just that in your own time.

How I wish I had had that when I was growing up!

  

Love's labour lost...

A tale of two 'break-ups'; and the life lessons we can learn from them

"Shame" read the stark slogan engraved on the wall. That was the image that Virat Kohli, India's newly-anointed Cricket God fresh from his triumphant innings against Australia in the World T20 tournament, posted on Twitter with a tweet that read: "Shame on people for trolling @AnushkaSharma non-stop. Have some compassion. She has always only given me positivity."

The same image turned up on his Instagram account with an even more searing message: "Shame on those people who have been having a go at Anushka for the longest time and connecting every negative thing to her...Shame on blaming and making fun of her when she has no control over what I do with my sport..."

Yes, I know, Virat also made it clear in this message that he didn't need respect. And that instead people should respect Anushka, and have some compassion for her. But it is hard not to respect a man who stands up so firmly and so publicly for his ex. (Well, she is his ex at the moment of this writing, but who knows what the next week may bring; there is already fevered speculation that they are 'just on a break' and may get together again. But I digress.)

There are some who would dismiss Kohli's public defence of his former girlfriend as the very least he could do ("It's just basic human decency, yaar, what's the big deal?") But to the rest of us, used as we are to the sight of messy celebrity breakups with both parties washing their dirty designer jeans in public, it was a sight for sore eyes.

Here, at last, was a man who didn't rubbish his ex the moment she was out of his life. Au contraire, he was taking on those who would rubbish her, most of whom purported to be his 'fans', and telling them where to get off.

But then, Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma never really played by the rules of celebrity relationships. They didn't give gushing interviews about how much they loved each other; but equally they did not hide the fact that they were together. They would travel on the same plane, Anushka would applaud her boyfriend enthusiastically from the stands, and he would tweet proudly about her new releases.

Together, the couple taught the prying Indian public the difference between secrecy and privacy. And they did this with grace and humour, even though it can't have been easy for either of them to deal with those carping critics who blamed Anushka's presence in his life for Virat's poor form during that period.

And when their love story ended and social media began trolling Anushka because Virat was back in good nick, it was Kohli who went batting for her with the kind of ferocity that only he is capable of (both on and off the wicket).

Strangely enough, even as Virat and Anushka were giving us tips on the art of the good break-up, there was another pair of celebrities driving home the lessons by helpfully posing as a cautionary tale.

Yes, I am talking about Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut. Now, we don't know for sure if they ever had an affair (so, please Hrithik, no legal notices for this piece) or if they were anything more than colleagues. All we know is that Kangana referred to a 'silly ex' in one of her press interactions. Hrithik reacted by tweeting that there were more chances of him having an affair with the Pope than with any of the ladies mentioned in the media.

To cut a long story short, the sorry saga culminated with both parties slapping legal suits on one another. In his legal notice, Hrithik's lawyers alleged that Kangana was delusional and suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, leading to mental health professionals raining fire on Hrithik's head. For good measure, Hrithik also got sued by a Catholic fringe group for insulting the Pope. (Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up!)

What these two parallel narratives provide for us is a ready primer for how to deal with a love or a 'professional relationship' (there, there, happy now, Hrithik?) that has run its course.

First up, don't share details of your relationship or the break-up. It is nobody's business but your own; keep it that way. As the saying goes: never complain, never explain.

Next, don't give in to the temptation to bitch about your ex. No matter how loud people may swear that theirs is a 'mutual decision' most relationships end with one person being left and the other doing the leaving. And often the desire to paint the other party as a devil is overwhelming. Well, learn to resist it. Shut up and let the moment, the week, the month, the year pass; and so will the temptation to hurt the one you once loved.

And finally, even when the love has faded never forget that this was a person that you once adored. Remember how hard you fought to protect them when you were together. Bring the same passion to defend them when you have drifted apart. That is the best way to pay tribute to the bond you once shared (and also be a decent human being).

In other words, when it comes to matters of the heart, be a Virat, not a Hrithik.

It's your fault!

Behind every unsuccessful man we look for the woman who ‘jinxed’ him

Anushka Sharma has magical powers. Through her presence alone, she can ensure that her boyfriend fails in every innings, jinx the entire Indian Test team, and engineer two back-to-back innings defeats in the recently-concluded India vs England Test series.

Who knew? Not the BCCI, certainly, which gave Virat Kohli special permission to take his girlfriend along for the England tour. And certainly not Virat, or he would have left her behind safely in Mumbai, while he played the field (I am talking of cricket of course; what did you think?) in the balmy sunshine of an English afternoon. But he took the unlucky minx along, and now look what’s happened: we have suffered our worst defeat since that much-talked-about Summer of 42 in England!

But don’t worry, all you cricket lovers (and Virat Kohli fans). The BCCI is on the ball, revising its rules to ensure that such disaster never strikes again. The Board has now decreed that cricketers will not be allowed to take their girlfriends on tour with them. And even legally wedded and bedded wives will only be allowed to accompany their cricketer spouses for a limited period of time. This will ensure, or so the BCCI assures us, that the team is not distracted by all those pesky little women, who always want to go shopping or sightseeing (or whisper it, have sex!) and don’t allow their husbands to get on with serious stuff like practicing at the nets, working out at the gym, or even winning a match or two.

Honestly, these evil women with their wiles and their charms, seducing our heroes away from the straight and narrow path that leads to victory. These horrid witches who cast a spell on their men, turning them into a shadow of their former selves. They really should be burnt at the stake! Or at the very least, have their passports torched so that they can’t travel along with their husbands/boyfriends.

Yes, for some reason, it is always the women who bring bad luck, and the men who have to suffer as a consequence. So, if Dhoni has a bad run after he gets married, it must be his wife, Sakshi’s fault. She must be bringing him bad luck with her presence in the stands. And if Virat is back in the pavilion no sooner than he left, it must be because he can’t bear to be away from Anushka for a minute longer.

Of the two evils, wives and girlfriends, wives are just a tad more tolerable. At least their sexual allure is a little dulled by familiarity, so they don’t distract their husbands quite so much. But girlfriends? Tauba, tauba, they must be banished forthwith so that the boys can get on with the job.

So far, so sexist. Not just about the women, who are portrayed as sex-crazed and shopping-mad harpies who won’t give their men a moment’s rest. But also about the men, who are depicted as sorry stereotypes, constantly led astray by a certain part of their anatomy. This kind of scenario doesn’t just demonize women, it also infantilizes men, to the detriment of both genders.

But on balance, as always, it is the women who come off worse. They are the ones held responsible for the non-performance/bad luck of their men. Virat Kohli is playing so badly because Anushka Sharma is bringing him bad luck (or leaving him so exhausted and distracted that he can’t tell a full toss from a yorker). But nobody would dream of suggesting that Anushka’s movie flopped because her performance suffered as a consequence of being involved with Virat.

That’s how it has always been, hasn’t it? Blaming women for stuff that they couldn’t possibly be responsible for. It happened centuries ago when women who were widowed young were treated as social lepers who had to be cordoned off from society in case their bad luck infected everyone else (in some circles, this is still true even in the 21^st century). We’ve all heard of cases where young brides are castigated for having brought bad luck when a family death occurs soon after their wedding (no matter that it couldn’t possibly have been their fault). And if the death is that of the husband, then all hell breaks loose.

Yes, blaming women for all the bad stuff that goes down is as old as time itself. So, what’s been happening with Anushka Sharma is pretty much par for the course. And you could argue that it is pretty harmless. After all, it just boils down to a few jokes on social media, a brief flurry of commentary pieces on the sports pages, and a couple of cartoons. It’s hardly serious enough to do her any damage; as a strong, modern, successful woman, surely she knows how to take this in her stride?

And I am sure that she does. But what a pity that we live in a world in which she has to!