02.19.07
Don’t Forgive Jade Goody, Rather Thank Her Ms. Shetty
What happens to a Bollywood actress who is past 30 year of age, has more flops under her belt than hits, is taller than most actors who can be paired with her on-screen and is considered too old for the newer set of heroes who have the height to match hers?
Get married to one of the crorepatis and sit back and relax.
Well this may seem to an option to some but not one when you are an energetic smart girl with black belt in some form of martial art and are too hyper to lead a sedate, unexciting though comfortable life.
So you look for more options.
You don’t want to do any more endorsements of a saree brand, since the scars of the Praful sarees are still on your mind.
You try to pose alluringly for a magazine and the get charged for posing in an obscene manner.
Your chances are limited to being a judge on a celebrity dance show where you unabashedly keep admiring someone who is a horrible dancer but a successful film Director, calling his rigid and ungainly hip movements ‘unbelievable and outstanding’.
I am sure that you had a plum role in your mind when you eulogized his abominable dance steps, much to the embarrassment of the performer himself.
You also try at lending a helping hand to those involved in social issues like HIV-aids and PETA.
The efforts to change the image from a medium-time glamour-doll-cum- actress in 47 something movies, largely inconsequential seemed to be working. A couple of court cases one involving alleged links with the underworld and the other pertaining to giving provocative shots to Tamil magazine seemed to be fading away from public memory
And then comes the turning point in your life and career. You get the invite from the Celebrity Big Brother where you are made to stay in a strange house with many other strangers whose sole aim is to survive at the cost of one another’s eviction.
Your presence in the first few days was as inconspicuous as the roles that you portrayed in your films.
Were in not for the trio of Jade Goody, Jo O’ Meare and Danielle Llyod, you would have got the eviction orders within a few days of your arrival.
It was the racial abuse that you were subjected to that led to your victory. Had they not called you ‘Shilpa ****wallah’ and ‘Shilpa Poaapdam’ you wouldn’t have cried so naturally on the TV.
I have read somewhere that after Shetty attempted to dispose of leftover chicken-soup down the toilet and causing a blockage, a housemate, I think it was Jack Tweed, suggested that you should pick the bones out with your teeth.
And your reaction to the insults? Tears of course!
You stomached all the abuses and insults hurled upon you in a live game show and wept. And the whole of India erupted! All joined hands in a rare show of solidarity to burn the effigies of your tormentors. One Minister, I think it was Anand Sharma, even lodged a complaint with the British PM Tony Blair.
You wailed and wailed but didn’t leave the show, because you had a point to prove. Because your leaving the show would have meant that you had succumbed to the evil design of the racists. The whole Indian community made you a Hero.
And then you finally won the game show! The insult to you didn’t end there. You didn’t get invited to the end-of-series party of the Celebrity Bib Brother. Though you did collect your cash prize. And you did sign up a well-known publicist as your agent and you did collect a neat sum for talking exclusively to some big-time newspapers. You even got to shake hands with Tony Blair and you found him sweet! How sweet of you really!
Our hands didn’t get tired of clapping for you when you suddenly pronounced that you had forgiven Hade Goody. You even said that you didn’t think that the abuses hurled at you weren’t racial! You are on record saying, ‘ people say things in anger’.
Who gave you the right to forgive Jade Goody? May be you thought that by becoming the martyr earlier you should now become the forgiver. You now wanted to wear the halo of a hero who was wronged and yet she forgave. A female Jesus Christ!
I hated it when all my friends rallied around you when you were being humiliated. I reasoned with them that you were a second-grade actress who was on the third-grade show with some of the fourth-grade housemates in your personal capacity. I said to your set of admirers that you knew the odds that were against you and you were in there for the money and that you were not there as the representative of India.
‘No. Crazy you. She is our Indian girl there being humiliated. I wish she walked out of the show to register her protest. But if she chooses to stay on, she would have my support.’ One of the balding, paunchy men in his early forties had cried to me.
‘Just watch her win the show. She will speak her mind then. Inside she is alone and they may just beat her black-and-blue if she speaks out’
‘But she has a black-belt.’ I reminded him.
The least your supporters expected was that you would speak your mind to the press on coming out of the show. How we wished that you would say that racism is wrong and racists are mad dogs. Rather you forgave them.
Hope it is not because the show promoters stuffed something rich in your mouth? Or you agent told you that if you kept your nerves now you could get the role of a sidekick in the next James Bond movie. A dream role where the least that you will get is to kiss the 007, if not a full bathing scene with him in a seedy Russian hotel!
Sorry Shipla you disappoint us. But may be we Indians expected too much from the heroine of ordinary talent, though with extra-ordinary legs.
What right do we have to expect any honesty from these Bollywood types who bleach their hair to look like blondes and who speak in anglicized accent while earning their daily bread from Hindi cinema.
God Bless you Shilpa but You should thank Jade Goody for winning you the show. You have no right to forgive her!
Sudhir Bisht is a consultant and a freelance writer. He can be contacted at sudhir_bisht@rediffmail.com
