Everything for the right price

Looking for Bollywood stars with a conscience is like looking for politicians who genuinely care about India neither really exists

I have little to say about the Cobrapost exposé that revealed what millions of us have always known about Bollywood stars. The hot takes and opinion pieces have been written, a few hundred barbs have appeared on Twitter, and everything is back to normal because the Kapil Sharma show is probably on in a few hours from now. Our collective surprise and outrage has long run its course because there's a new awful film out this week and life must go on.

It is naive to expect any different, obviously, given that ours is a country where ministers accused of murder and extortion can end up dictating who should or shouldn't be allowed to stay in India. Hypocrisy is probably embedded deep in our DNA.

And yet, I believe there has to be a reckoning of sorts in this instance, because the idea of celebrity is about give and take. We put men and women on pedestals, shower them with fame and fortune, because we expect them to give us something in return. This isn't always as simple as paying to be entertained. Some global celebrities really do teach us about life, while others inspire us to be better human beings. Not all of them fade into the sunset when the director yells 'Cut.'

What amuses me when I look at stars from Bollywood, sadly, is how none of them add anything positive to India's story. This wouldn't matter if we weren't a country obsessed with sports and bad cinema, but we are, which makes some kind of accountability important. Film stars here must do more and behave better because they wield more power.

I stopped watching anything released by the Hindi film industry years ago. I did this not because I wanted to prove a point, but simply because life is too short to be wasted on anything that isn't very good.

Unfortunately, there are a billion people who choose to invest time and money on these films and the people who create them, making it possible for all kinds of dubious men and women to become influential folk with astonishing power at their fingertips. Naturally, this power is used to make money, because actors who aren't interested in money never graduate from theatre.

It is naive to expect film stars to evaluate their decisions from anything other than the prism of commerce. Some of them do, of course, because their conscience has managed to stay alive despite their best efforts to smother it. Most of them don't, because they worry about the fickle nature of fame, and how two bad films can precipitate a fall from billboards to the nearest soap opera. It is this desperate urge to squeeze every last drop in exchange for an endorsement that leads to what
Cobrapost showed us.

An argument that began circulating in the aftermath of those revelations sought to absolve actors who hadn't been caught, with excuses of how only has-beens had been targeted. That, to my mind, simply erased the possibility of soul searching. Film stars the world over are treated as nothing more than beautiful people who entertain us. In India, unfortunately, they have always been treated as demigods and should be made accountable for that precise reason.

When was the last time a Bollywood star did something worthy of praise, let alone something that led to genuine change? When was the last time a star used his or her power to do more than tweet about a trending topic in order to be on the politically correct side of a conversation? When was the last time any of the million genuine problems plaguing the film industry itself were addressed seriously, let alone more important issues that concern the rest of us?

The truth about Bollywood is that it is little more than an insular circle of pretenders who band together to maintain an illusion. It's why con artists and criminals have thrived in that hallowed space for decades, ruining lives of impressionable teenagers with impunity, masquerading as farmers to buy land, opening offshore accounts to save taxes, maintaining dual citizenship, always safe in the knowledge that a photo opportunity at the right reception with the right politician can erase all wrongdoings.

I recognise the impotence of this argument, along with the ridiculous notion that an exposé will suddenly prompt our stars to use their celebrity for change rather than profit. It doesn't hurt to dream though. After all, isn't that what we were told cinema was about?

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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