A tale of two Princesses

Both Priyanka Chopra and Meghan Markle married the Princes of their dreams – and both have had to deal with the nightmare coverage that followed

The first time the world realized that Meghan Markle and Priyanka Chopra were best friends was when the Indian superstar, resplendent in a Vivienne Westwood lilac couture outfit, turned up at St George’s Chapel in Windsor, to attend the Royal Wedding. As Meghan and Prince Harry said their ‘I dos’, Priyanka was among those smiling mistily at the newly-weds. And later in the evening, when it was party time at Frogmore House, Priyanka (now rocking a spectacular sequined Dior gown) was among those dancing the night away.

Frankly, nobody should have been too surprised at this. When you consider the personal histories of both women, their friendship seems somewhat inevitable. Both of them are women of colour who have built up their careers with sheer grit and fortitude in industries in which they had no Godfathers.

In Priyanka’s case, she arrived in Bollywood as a rank outsider – the Miss World title notwithstanding – and slowly but steadily made her mark until she was one of the top actresses of her generation. And then, at the zenith of her career in the Hindi film industry, she took an enormous gamble and signed on to play the lead in the ABC show, Quantico. This brought her global fame and made her a bonafide star in the US as well – a feat that no Indian actress before her had achieved.

Meghan Markle had it even tougher as she tried to break through in Hollywood. She began with blink-and-you-miss-her appearances in such shows as 90210 and stood in as a ‘suitcase girl’ in Deal or No Deal. Then followed a few forgettable bit roles in movies before she finally landed the role that made her famous, Rachel Zane in the legal drama, Suits. As a biracial actress, she was always hard to slot, so the role of Rachel, who had a black father, was tailor-made for her – and, in turn, it made her reputation.

So, there was a certain inevitability to these two women, who had so much in common, becoming friends when they found themselves moving in the same social circles as they shot their respective shows in Toronto.

But now, alas, there appears to be another unfortunate, but inescapable parallel, that has developed between the two besties: their treatment in the media.

As women of colour trying to make their way in a world that is powered by white privilege both Priyanka and Meghan have had to deal with implicit – and sometimes downright explicit – racism in their media coverage. But while they were actresses going about their business, this was still at a reasonable level. But ever since they walked down the aisle with the princes of their dreams (and in Meghan’s case, an actual Prince), the racism, sexism, and plain old misogyny had got out of control.

In Priyanka’s case, this was best exemplified by a venomous article in New York Magazine’s The Cut that described her as a ‘global scam artist’ who had tricked dear deluded Nick Jonas into marrying her. The poor guy, the article read, had just wanted a fling with a glamorous star but was now staring at a ‘life sentence’ after being dragged into a ‘fraudulent relationship against his will’. After an international outcry, the article was taken down, but not before it’s sexist, racist and downright misogynistic tropes had gone viral.

Meghan Markle had had to face the same sort of toxic coverage ever since she married Prince Harry, but in her case, you have to magnify it to the power of a thousand. The British tabloids seem to have made it their life’s mission to destroy the reputation of the newly-minted Duchess of Sussex, spawning a hundred different negative stories about her every day.

Meghan was so ‘difficult’ at a bridesmaid dress fitting for Princess Charlotte that she made Kate (who had just given birth to Prince Louis and was feeling particularly emotional) cry. Meghan wakes up at 5 am every morning and bombards her staff with mails and calls. Meghan made the life of her personal assistant such hell that the poor woman was often reduced to tears and quit after six months. Meghan demanded an emerald tiara and got very stroppy when it was denied to her. Meghan drove a wedge between Harry and his brother William (or was it between Harry and Kate? – who can keep up with this stuff?).

The themes of the coverage are quite consistent. How did these two women of colour, these two upstarts, these rank outsiders, get so far ahead? Who did they ‘scam’ to get where they are? Why don’t they know their place? What gives them the right to stage ‘royal’ weddings, as if they were Princesses in their own right?

Well, you know what? That’s exactly what these women are: Princesses.

No, not the kind who are born in royal palaces to kings and queens. Not the kind who arrive in the world with a golden spoon in their mouth, and have everything handed to them on a platter. And certainly not the kind who have never done a day of work in their lives, gliding aimlessly through their gilded world.

Priyanka and Meghan are Princesses of a different order. They are women who have conquered the world with their own grit, courage, determination, and yes, talent. They have earned the right to wear that crown – or at the very least, that tiara – that proclaims their Princess status through their own efforts. And long may they reign over their detractors!

Heel, girl!

Are you sure you want to clamber on to those sky-high stilettoes?

I must confess that I was among those astounded to see Melania Trump perched atop a pair of vertiginous stilettoes as she departed the White House with her husband, Donald, on a trip to visit those affected by Hurricane Harvey. Was this really the right kind of footwear to wear to a disaster zone, I mused on Twitter.

To be fair to the American First Lady, she ditched the heels inflight and alighted in Texas wearing a pair of spotless white tennis shoes. But the whole brouhaha about Melania’s footwear, with social media going into meltdown and fashion glossies weighing in with their verdict on her style choices, reminded me yet again that when it comes to women, shoes are rarely simply shoes. They always carry a subliminal message within them, sending out signals with every clack of the heels or thump of the boot.

Five-inch heels don’t just tell the world that you have a high pain threshold, they also indicate that you don’t ever need to use public transport. A sensible kitten heel (like the ones the British Prime Minister Theresa May favours) marks you out as someone who values both comfort and style. A no-nonsense boot with a chunky heel tells you that its owner doesn’t mess about. And flats are the choice of a woman who stands tall in her own estimation, who doesn’t need a few extra inches to boost her self-esteem. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Shoes tell a story. Shoes are an essential part of your self-image, the narrative you are trying to establish about yourself. And the story is not just about who you are but what you want to be; it’s not just about how you project yourself to the world, but also about how the world sees you.

Speaking for myself, I always feel faintly perturbed when I see those all-pervasive images of the Trump women – Melania, Ivanka, Tiffany – always balanced perfectly on those sky-high heels, walking with almost balletic grace, presenting a picture of Goddess-like perfection that is impossible for mere mortals like us to achieve. These women are far above us – both literally and metaphorically – as they sway gently along, their feet floating five inches above the ground.  

How on earth do they do that? It must be hell on the soles of their feet, their bunions, their knees and their backs. And yet, there they are, day in and day out, walking past the cameras, working those ridiculously high heels, smiling and waving as if their feet weren’t killing them, one step at a time.

And it’s not just the Trump triumvirate either. Who can forget the sight of that Stiletto Slayer formerly known as Kate Middleton and now styled as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, stomping through Delhi and Mumbai during her State visit to India, her feet forever encased in high heels that seemed to have been grafted on to her soles? It didn’t matter if she was visiting a slum, hanging out with school kids or trying her hand at cricket; whatever she did, wherever she went, the heels stayed on.

As if these images weren’t enough, popular culture is also teeming with women, who live their lives in their stilettoes. There’s Téa Leoni in Madam Secretary, flying off to trouble spots all over the world in her high heels. There’s Sophia Vergara in Modern Family, who slips on her stilettoes to cook breakfast for the family. And then, there’s our very own Priyanka Chopra who hunts terrorists in Quantico while working a five-inch heel.

In real life, too, I know far too many women who spend their working day balancing on high heels as if their life depended on it. Ask them why and they will explain that they find their heels ‘empowering’. Those extra inches enable them to look their male colleagues and bosses in the eye and give them an extra fillip of confidence. They feel more put together, more in control, more business-like and professional when they are in their heels.

And who knows. Maybe they are right. What does a woman like me, who lives in her ballet flats, know about stuff like that?

But when they start telling me how ‘comfortable’ they are in their five-inch heels, and how they can even run in them, I’m afraid I reach the limits of my credulity. Sorry ladies, but I’m not buying that. Show me a woman who swears that her stilettoes don’t leave her in a world of pain at the end of the day, and I will show you a liar. Even the superwoman, Catherine, slips a silicone pad into her shoes to lessen the strain on her soles as she goes through her royal engagements. So, don’t tell me those shoes don’t hurt.

But such is the insidious grip that these objects of torture have on the female imagination that even today among the first rites of passage a young girl goes through is buying her first pair of heels. She teeters around proudly while her mother (who really should know better by now) watches proudly. Her girl is finally blossoming into a woman – and part of being a woman is that your feet hurt all the time.

How I wish someone would take these little girls aside and tell them it doesn’t have to be like that. Dancing in heels may make them feel glamorous and grown-up. But running in flats, that’s what is really empowering.

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!

  

American Pie

Priyanka Chopra sets out to conquer new shores with her lead role in Quantico

I caught the first episode of Quantico in the strangest of places: Siem Reap in Cambodia (home to the fabulous Angkor Wat and other equally amazing temples). And such are the quirks of television scheduling that I saw it several days before it was aired in India. (And no, unlike some critics in India, I didn't obsess needlessly about Priyanka Chopra's accent: she sounds exactly how an Indian who has spent time in America does. So people, stop with the hyperventilating already!)

So, what did I think of it? Well, it's a good show, sharp, pacy, and full of surprises, which borrows heavily from such series as How To Get Away With Murder, Homeland, and even Grey's Anatomy, but still manages to write its own grammar. I won't say any more about the plot in case you kill me for the spoilers, but by now surely everyone knows that the story revolves around a half-Indian half-American FBI agent called Alex Parrish, who is framed for the most dreaded terrorist attack on US soil after 9/11 (and she can only clear her name by finding the real culprit who is one of her classmates from the FBI training academy at Quantico.)

Alex Parrish is, of course, played by Priyanka Chopra. Many have wondered why Chopra decided to risk her superstardom in India by choosing to play the lead in an American TV series. (And shock all of India in the bargain by, spoiler alert, having sex in the front seat of a car with a virtual stranger within the first few minutes of the show.) After all, she is one of the biggest film stars India has ever produced. Why on earth would she want to go and start afresh in American network television, as a relative unknown? Why jeopardize a sure thing by betting on the unknown?

Well, according to Chopra herself, she hasn't given up on Bollywood. She still flies back to Mumbai over the weekends to shoot for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's next magnum opus, Bajirao Mastani (and looks suitably sensational in the trailer, by the way) that releases later this year. And she will continue to work in Hindi movies, alongside her American venture, living 'on a plane' because she is, as she told Jimmy Kimmel, a complete 'nomad'.

That might well be the case. But equally, there is no denying that given how Bollywood works, at 33, Chopra has only a few leading-lady years left in her. After that, it will be mostly quirky, small-budget movies (what the Bollywood wallahs call multiplex cinema) that will come her way.

So Chopra, who has always had her head sown on right, must have done a quick cost-benefit analysis. What is better: making smaller and fewer movies in India; or trying to break into American network television, which is in a red-hot creative phase? And who knows, maybe getting a free pass to Hollywood, once she achieves the same kind of stardom in America.

So when a big network like ABC came knocking with a slew of scripts, 'no' wasn't really an option. And of all the ones she read, Quantico was the one that appealed to her. So much so that she even did the unthinkable for a movie star: she agreed to audition for the role (no doubt she had them at 'hello').

But even if we leave rational decision-making aside, there must have been something about making a new beginning in an entirely new industry that appealed to Chopra at a more visceral, emotional level. She's never been afraid of taking chances (remember the single she cut with Pitbull?), and this one must have seemed irresistible at this stage of her life.

But the more important question surely is: why is an American network like ABC making a show that revolves around an Indian (okay half-Indian) character?

Well, clearly the Indian-American demographic is now important enough to merit leading ladies and men who look like them. And happily, the casting has now gone beyond stereotypes like science nerds (Raj Koothrappali in The Big Bang Theory) or maths geniuses (Amita Ramanujan in Numbers) or even over-achieving doctors (Mindy Lahiri in The Mindy Project). With Priyanka Chopra playing a Carrie Mathison-type character (minus the bipolar stuff, thankfully) in Quantico, the FBI agent who pulls no punches, the Indian-American TV star has finally moved beyond the tires old tropes of typecasting.

But don't pop the champagne just yet. We still have miles to go, as indeed does Priyanka. She discovered this the hard way when her own network ran a promotional video for Quantico, which featured shots of Priyanka Chopra winning the Miss World contest. There was only one problem: the Miss World featured in the clips was Yukta Mookhey! Clearly, to some American eyes, one Indian beauty queen looks much like the other.

Maybe Quantico and Priyanka Chopra can change all that. And judging by the first episode, she's well on her way to do just that.

Leading lights

Has Bollywood finally accepted that a heroine can power a movie just as well as a hero?

After all the brouhaha that surrounded the making of Mary Kom, the movie – most of it centering around why the filmmakers couldn’t have got an ethnic Manipuri rather than the very north Indian Priyanka Chopra to play the lead role – I must confess that I was rather curious to see how the film turned out in the end. So, for once, rather than wait for the DVD to come out, I actually ventured into a cinema hall to catch the movie, first day, first show.

And I wasn’t disappointed. Yes, it was over-the-top in parts, the usual Bollywood clichés were well in place, and some characters were played at the level of caricature. But what made the movie work was Priyanka Chopra. She didn’t just play Mary Kom; she was Mary Kom. And she achieved this not with prosthetics, make-up and mimicry, but by taking on the legendary boxer’s fighting spirit and making it her own.

Just a few scenes into the film, and you forget all about Chopra’s ethnicity. All you care about is her performance, remarkable in its range and nuance. She brings Mary Kom alive on the big screen: her rebellion against her father who didn’t want her to box; her slow-burning love for Onler, her devoted husband; her stormy relationship with the boxing federation; her fiery determination to make a comeback after the birth of her twins; and more.

Such was Priyanka’s dominance that you didn’t even notice the lack of a leading man in the movie (her on-screen husband is not just supportive but strictly supporting-actor material). And that’s what stayed with me after the film had ended (with an evocative playing of Jana Gana Mana, which had the entire hall standing in teary silence): the fact that this was a woman’s story, told from a woman’s point of view, without any pandering to masculine sensibilities.

Does this mean that Bollywood has finally grown up and realized that you don’t always need an over-muscled man in the lead for a movie to do well at the box-office? Is Hindi cinema finally willing to give its heroines what they have always longed for: a meaty role to sink their teeth into, and a film to carry on their own shoulders?

Well, it is early days yet, but the signs are rather encouraging. Last month saw the release of Rani Mukherji’s Mardaani, in which she plays an angry young cop, who runs down a trafficking ring with a combination of detective work, brute force and a liberal use of swear words. Yes, the kind of role that Amitabh Bachchan played in another lifetime; only this time it was a woman in the lead role. And though the movie was not a superhit, garnering only modest success at the box-office, Rani herself received good notices, proving that audiences are not entirely non-receptive to such women-centric films.

This is a change that has been a long time coming, but has become more and more evident over the last few years. Sridevi’s English Vinglish, released in 2012, was one of the first signs. A small-budget, quirky movie about a middle-aged housewife who discovers herself anew as she signs up to learn English in New York, when she arrives there to help organize her niece’s wedding, this became a surprise hit, on the basis of Sridevi’s sparkling performance (and a brilliant effort by writer-director Gauri Shinde).

The following year belonged to Kangana Ranaut’s Queen, in which she did a marvelous job of playing a West Delhi Punjabi kudi who is jilted at the mandap but decides to go off on the honeymoon of her dreams anyway, even if it is on her own. Yes, there was a hero of sorts, the man who jilts her, but this was Kangana’s show all the way. And she pulled it off with both nonchalance and elan, proving that a heroine can power a movie at the box-office just as well as a hero.

The pioneer of this trend, though, was undoubtedly Vidya Balan. She started off with Dirty Picture, playing a Silk Smitha-type character in one-size-too-tight clothes, and ooh-la-laaed her way to a superhit. She went on to make waves with Kahani, in which she played a woman who may or may not be pregnant but is indubitably in search of her missing husband. And though her latest outing as Bobby Jasoos, a wannabe detective who specializes in weird disguises, bombed at the box-office, Balan herself got rave reviews.

But while these breakout hits (peppered with the occasional flop) are all well and good, the proof of the pudding would be when big budget blockbusters like Happy New Year depend not on a hero like Shah Rukh Khan but on a heroine like Deepika Padukone to draw in the crowds. Or when a superhero is not called Krishh or Ra.One but Radha or even Sita.

Come to think of it, both Priyanka and Deepika would fill out a superhero (or should that be superheroine?) outfit admirably. Super Shakti: Rakshasa Slayer anyone?

Storm in a T-cup

Given the amount of squabbling on its timelines, should we just rename Twitter as Bicker?

Just a thought. Do you think they should rename Twitter as Bicker? It certainly seems apt given how it has rapidly become a forum for people to squabble about everything in short bursts of 140 characters. Lovers quarrel bitterly; ex-wives and ex-husbands vent venom; new partners give full rein to their jealous rages; and everyone throws insults around in a no-holds-barred fashion. Nothing is private. Nothing is sacred. And nothing is off-limits.

A couple of weeks ago, we watched agog as French politics descended into soap-opera territory via Twitter. President Francois Hollande looked on helplessly as his current partner, the journalist Valerie Trierweiler targeted his former partner (and mother of his four children), Segolene Royal, in a vicious tweet that hit Royal just where it hurt the most.

Royal, standing for election to a parliamentary seat, was being opposed by a dissident from her own Socialist party. So her former partner and now President of the Republic, Francois Hollande, sent out a message of support to Royal to bolster her chances at the polls (after all, she had done her best to support his presidential campaign). That was enough to make his current partner (and now the Premier Dame of France), Trierweiler, see red. She allegedly called up Hollande to remonstrate and then said chillingly, “Now you will see what I am capable of.”

And thus went out the now-infamous tweet, motivated by what insiders called Trierweiler’s ‘blind jealousy’. In it, she wished good look and ‘courage’ to Royal’s opponent in the poll. All of France was appalled, the French Prime Minister publicly rebuked Trierweiler and asked that she be more ‘discreet’ and ‘know her place’. And Royal announced sadly, at an election rally, that she felt ‘wounded’ by the tweet and that she deserved respect as a woman, a politician, and a mother.

But the damage was done. When the votes were counted, Royal had lost the seat, and with it the chances of becoming President of the National Assembly, the third-highest post in the country’s political structure. A bitter Royal quoted Victor Hugo to say that “Traitors always pay for their treachery in the end” and her four children, for good measure, stopped speaking to their father’s current partner.

So what started out as a storm in a T-cup ended up taking down the reputations of all the protagonists in the drama. Valerie was exposed as an insecure, vindictive woman who could not control her insane jealousy of her partner’s former lover. Hollande was shown up as a man who could not manage the women in his life (so, how on earth would he manage France, ran the sub-text). And as for poor Royal, her political career imploded in the aftermath of Twittergate and looks extremely unlikely to revive any time soon.

But while nobody in their right minds can condone Trierweiler’s scorched-earth policy on Twitter, there are some political spouses who have gained from their tweet-wars. Most famously, there was Anne Romney who went on Twitter to take on political commentator, Hilary Rosen, who said in a debate on CNN that Mrs Romney “had never worked a day in her life”. Anne Romney was quick to retort, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work”. Her tweet got her the support of every stay-at-home mom, and many other women besides.

Of late, though, Twitter wars have tended to be increasingly undignified, even downright tawdry at times. Take the current battle royale raging between British multi-millionaire Ben Goldsmith (son of Jimmy and Annabel Goldsmith and brother to Jemima Khan) and his estranged wife, Kate, a Rothschild heiress. Ben called his wife’s behaviour ‘appalling’ on Twitter (because she had called the police on him) while she responded with a series of tweets saying that there were two sides to every break-up. Meanwhile, Kate’s alleged lover, the rapper Jay Electronica (yes, really!) put in his two-bit worth by tweeting #LoveIsOnTheWay. Yeah, real classy, this lot.

In India, too, we have had our share of Twitter wars. The most famous was the one waged by Lalit Modi against Shashi Tharoor (about the now-defunct Kochi franchise of the IPL) which resulted in Tharoor losing his job as minister and being consigned to political wilderness while Modi lost control of the IPL and was banished from the Indian cricketing scene to languish in exile (in London, though, so it can’t be all that bad).

More recently, we saw Karan Johar take on Priyanka Chopra for a story she did or did not (depending on whom you believe) plant about how some star wives and certain directors who were close to them were giving her a bad time. A livid Johar tweeted about how some people were ‘lame and spineless’ and needed ‘to wake up and smell the koffee’ and not ‘mess with goodness’. Of course, he did not mention Priyanka by name, but the inference was clear – and Twitter-sphere was abuzz in a matter of seconds.

So, what do you think? Does Bicker work better than Twitter? Or do you have a better idea? All suggestions welcome at my Twitter handle (given below). And may the best name win.

The claws are out

There’s never been much love lost between Hindi film heroines; but what’s with all the recent public sniping?

Older readers will probably remember a more innocent time when film magazines carried reverential articles about the leading stars of the day, when those who were in a relationship were described as ‘very good friends’, and every heroine felt compelled to express her utmost respect for her female colleagues even though what she really wanted was to claw their eyes out.

Well, guess what? That’s exactly what the ladies are doing these days – albeit metaphorically, for the time being at least. For now, their weapon of choice is their tongue and boy, do they hand out a lashing with a rare relish!

Nor are their frank opinions expressed within the privacy of their own drawing rooms. Au contraire, they are aired on their TV channels of choice as they act all naughty and playful on the talk show of the day. The barbs are dressed up with giggles and chuckles but they are sharp and well-directed for all that. And they are trading them as if there is no tomorrow.

Playing a starring role in these cat fights is Deepika Padukone, ex-girlfriend of Ranbir Kapoor and current squeeze of Siddharth (son of Vijay) Mallya. Asked what product her former boyfriend should endorse, Deepika was quick to respond. “Condoms!” she replied, with perfect aplomb. Questioned about Katrina Kaif – with whom Ranbir is said to be ‘very good friends’ (see above) – she said she would like to see her passport. Apparently, this was a reference to the rumour that there is some dispute about Katrina’s nationality and thus, her work status in India. (And no, I hadn’t a clue about this either.)

But Deepika is just the first among equals in this bitching fest, for want of a more polite term. Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra, who began as good friends (or so they claimed at the time) now never tire of sniping at one another. Evidently, it’s all down to the fact that Priyanka began dating Shahid after Kareena dumped him for Saif Ali Khan. Priyanka and Shahid are apparently no longer together (do try and keep up!) but the ladies are still sniping away at each other.

Kareena was first off the block, asking Priyanka where she had gotten her accent from. Priyanka, who has been educated abroad, retorted with a tart: “The same place her boyfriend got his”. Then Priyanka was asked that if she could steal something off the computer of a long list of people (including Senior Bachchan and other Hindi film stalwarts) what would she steal? When it came to Kareena, Priyanka asked with faux-innocence: “Does she even have a computer?”

Oooh, you could just see the (Hermes, of course) handbags being drawn at dawn.

For some reason, most of this sniping and bitching happens on Karan Johar’s talk show. Suddenly in the midst of a somewhat happy-clappy atmosphere where everyone is laughing and teasing one another, you get a zinger like the ones quoted above. And above the sound of a million gasps across the nation you can hear Karan chuckle happily as he thinks of the headlines this little one-liner will elicit for the next few weeks.

Okay, so can I understand why Johar is happy for the occasional barb to be levelled across the parapet of the Koffee with Karan (honestly, what is with all this ‘K’ stuff? Doesn’t anyone know how to spell any longer?) show because that can only be good for his ratings. The more outrageous the stars get on the show, the more people are likely to tune in to get their weekly fix of cheap thrills.

But why do the stars fall in line so readily? Why are they so willing to say unkind things about one another on national television? Why are they so ready to be flip and bitchy about their colleagues? Why do they get so darn nasty with so little provocation?

Okay, Karan does tend to needle them a bit. But then, that’s his job as an anchor, to stir things up, to push the envelope, to make people say things that they otherwise would not. After all, his brief is to make the show as interesting as he possibly can. And quips like these go down swimmingly with the audience at home.

But my question is this: why do the stars fall for it? Why is it that in episode after episode, they all stumble into the same trap of slagging off their colleagues?

Is it that they are so comfortable with Karan – with whom all of them have done a movie or two and, no doubt, partied late into the night for good measure – that they forget that there is an actual audience out there watching and listening? Do they get conned into feeling that they are just among friends, joshing and joking, and that nothing they say will be taken seriously?

There may well be something to that because once the shock-horror reactions start pouring in, all the stars express outrage that what they said in good humour is being taken amiss. But, if you ask me, all this public sniping just makes me long for the good old days when stars concentrated on their pancake rather than their put-downs.

Call me quaint (and I’m sure you will) but I still prefer old-fashioned good manners over this new-fangled bitchiness.