Bollywood shollywood: My guilty pleasures

I am a big movie buff. I think more than movies, I am a big gossip buff! I am always browsing Bollywood websites in search of those spicy tidbits that newspaper or PR articles tend to miss. It somehow gives me great pleasure to tell people that X is involved with Y and not with Z actually, or A cheated on B with C, you get the idea. One of the first few blogs I had come across were the celebrity style decoding experts. Oh, what fun those are! I don’t know a squat about why are Ritu Kumar’s clothes more expensive than my mortgage, or why Sabyasachi’s one pastel blouse makes the bloggers go ‘OMG’, but the clothes sure are pretty! But still, nothing beats the gossip sites!

The blind item columns are my guilty pleasures. Although I can tell how some stories are absolutely fake and so randomly made up, nonetheless, they make for a fun reading. I had a phase a while back, where I would dig up stories about yesteryear’s stars and their naughty doings. This was when I used to be in the lab at grad school ‘working’ on my research ‘sincerely’. My mom was one prime source of the juicy tidbits. She remembers a lot of stuff covered in Stardust, the super controversial magazine at the top of their game that time. So I would google old news and articles to find out who did what exactly. Like a good girl, I would report my findings back to my mom punctuated with ‘Arre, nahi, waisa nahi tha, sachchai toh yeh thi” while my dad would shake his head like an elephant troubled by a fly. Trust me, stars that time, were upto no good! The things they have done, the steamy affairs that they have had, can put a current Bollywood star to shame. 2-3 weddings, religion changes, pregnancies by rakhi brothers, shaadi stoppings at the dot of time by another jealous actor and the actresses mother, ooh, so much fun!

These days, gossip begins and ends with PR stunts. Telling if relationships are real or fake is sort of hard. Two exes and co-stars praise each other, like no tomorrow for promoting their movie and then drop each other like hot potatoes as soon as #200crores are achieved. Plus, whatever they do is not so out of the ordinary anymore. Everyone around have girlfriends or boyfriends and are pretty much doing the same thing. But what makes it interesting is the play of the feelings in front of the entire media and world and the game of truth and lies.

There have been times I have found myself insisting really hard while gossiping with my friends with a “Yes! It IS true!” and throwing in a “You guys are useless, know nothing, I KNOW it!”. It is hilarious how I find myself insisting on something really happened, or defending why it happened or did not happen. I am practically a third(raised to the power n) person, yet I find myself so involved with the lives led in Bollywood.

It is funny how we stand so far from the glittery world, yet somehow get drawn so easily to it. People in India live for the 3Cs, Chai, Cricket and Cinema. I definitely find it hard to disconnect myself from the entertainment news. It gives me a vent, it makes me relaxed and it is pure, unadulterated fun.

Maybe that is really the magic of Bollywood lives.