Say only good things

Kangana Ranaut (TOI Photo) More picsLet���s get one thing straight. Bollywood has only one icon.
And he���s Amitabh Bachchan. I���m not talking box office or blog. It���s just plain and simple tehzeeb and tashan. Culture and style. Or good manners if you will. No matter under how much pressure AB never forgets to let you know he cares. Other stars hurt you and move on. He stops revises his steps and lets you know he cares.
There are friends. There���re professional acquaintances. And then there���re friends who behave like professional acquaintances and feed you lies that make them look foolish in print.
No matter how you look at it, our stars seriously need to examine their relationship with the press. Enough! At times I feel like calling their bluff.
Film families who can���t stand each other and bitch about one another privately meet in public like long-lost friends and blame the press for creating bad blood.
Like this senior actor, a rage in the 1970s, whom I really like because he tells it like it is and because his son is extraordinarily gifted. Sadly he sometimes backtracks after getting brutally honestly. ���Arrey yaar tuney to sab likh diya,��� he grumbled after he gave an interview about his best friend, the yesteryears��� dancing star���s tycoon-daughter. When it appeared in print it looked awful.
So what did our outspoken, frank, fearless actor do? He asked me to call up his friend and say I misquoted him! Start your own blog, yaar. Hire a publicist! Very often you wonder which planet these slipper-stars inhabit.
Kangana Ranaut prides herself for being frank, fearless and bohemian. So one has to be extra-careful in putting her thoughts forward. Last Valentine���s Day she showed her true colours when after giving what I thought was a truly funny interview about how she���d have to hire a gigolo to take her out since she had no boyfriend, she, yes, backtracked.
Dropping her polite ���Sir��� act she screamed, ���Why did you write about the gigolo? Do you know how it makes me look? Now I have men calling and passing comments....��� It was hard to believe that this screaming screeching harridan was the same girl who needed my ���blessings��� to make headway in the industry.
But then, they do this all the time. Zarina Wahab would know. She brought a girl whom she thought to be like a daughter. And the beti decided to have ���bed-tea��� with her husband and then vamoosed before the gracious Zarinaji could say, ���souten���. The blessed gulf between ���Sir��� and ���Sir-dard��� is so narrow in this industry you can easily fall for, if into into, it.
���You write so intelligently��� means, ���You write so well about me and if you want to be called intelligent please continue to write well about me, or else....���
The latest backtracking babbler in my life is Ram Gopal Varma who, just weeks before the release of his Sarkar Raj told me that Abhishek Bachchan did not die in the film. This was after distributors panicked on reading that Abhishek did. But die, Abhishek did in Sarkar Raj. And Ramu���s subterfuge was exposed. What I can���t figure out is, why distributors have developed cold feet about dying heroes when some of our most glorious screen idols have died a hero���s death... Dilip Kumar in Andaz and Devdas, Sunil Dutt in Mother India and Rajesh Khanna in countless quasi-classics from Anand and Aradhana to Roti and Namak Haraam.
Khanna made a career out of screen deaths. Then why this aversion to dying heroes now? So much so that in Mukhbiir, director Mani Shankar shot a death scene for his hero Sammir Dattani and then decided to re-shoot the sanguinary climax. According to
Mani, audiences don���t want to go home with the finality of death.
That���s possibly why Ramu panicked. And lied blatantly. ���Fear��� enough. But where does that leave the journalist? Am I supposed to be a mere receptacle of ideas thrown at me as and when they pleases?
No wonder in the West film critics often have to sign a contract with papers ensuring that they won���t hob-nob with any of the stars. This is the only way to ensure full autonomy to speak the truth about a film is ensured.
In India fully independent criticism is not possible. We���re an emotional people. If you are from a minority community you would instinctively react differently to films about racial or religious isolation like Aamir, Shaurya or going back, 36 Chowringee Lane. If you are a Maharashtrian you would respond to the fiercely political tone of Sarkar Raj differently to a Bihari who would probably empathise more with the politics of Prakash Jha���s Apaharan.
It���s a strange world out there. You think you know the answers when the stars surprise you. ���You���ll be the first to know,��� they���ll promise you. But to keep that promise stars need to stop looking at the media as a tool for selfpromotion. Be a Bachchan. Be a gentleman.