Con Job

Jitesh Pillai is not welcome. It pains me to give him prime place in my column, but he has the silliest, ladiest job in the world. Editing Filmfare can never possibly be a decently manly, if not overtly macho, job to hold. Ideally, I shouldn’t have a problem with him as we are never likely to cross paths. Because I have no self indulgence fantasies at The Body Shop, like he surely does. And nor do I still wear nappy pads. And nailpaint.

I don’t even gossip, bitch or discuss celebs. So a conversation is out of the question. And it doesn’t half burn my heart to see his Courtney Cox-esque editorial profile picture, crimson turtle neck tee et al. But when you’re stuck in the waiting lounge of a Yamaha dealership, reading Filmfare, it becomes slightly difficult to ignore the Inglorious Basturd (libel laws alert). I was there (yes, again!) to pick a friend’s R15 up, and to my disposal was a copy each of Filmare and Overdrive. And since I wasn’t in my regular mood of pointing out spelling mistakes and chuckling at preposterously public relation-ish pearls of wisdom about whatever test vehicle they were longing to drive on the G-Quad, Leh, or in France, I made the choice for Filmfare. And then His Editorship Sir Courtney Cox happened. How he makes assumptions (very clear, biased, imaginative ones at that) is more unbelievable than the concept of homosexuality. But sadly, it exists, and so does he. He, and I’m taking the liberty of quoting him here, is ‘thrilled about Kajol signing yet another project’, worried about how ‘Tabu has threatened to sign her third movie in a year’ and ‘why men won’t look at him anymore’. Well, you know which one he didn’t actually say.

A kind gentleman (as opposed to I don’t know what) offered his two bits saying that Cox job (heh, heh) wasn’t much different to mine. He firmly said I write about motorcycles and cars, and he about something which too is eventually a consumer good. And when I put forth in my argument that if Katrina Kaif was indeed a consumer good, I want exactly three of her in my lap right now, he left the room. But I have never, and will never type and send to print how Raju mechanic slept with Ramu mechanic while they were on a graveyard shift, assembling an engine on an empty Hero Honda chassis. I also wouldn’t really take stinking offence if either of the aforementioned mechies turned up in the same overalls to work the next morning. And the morning after. And that his shoes didn’t match the colour of his penis.

Why then, is there so much money riding on an industry which has no outcome, no effect, no influence on anything at all. Its readers are fourteen year olds who use it as light pornography while they battle pimples, and expect one cigarette as part of the resale value. It interviews the same stars over and over again; Vivek Oberoi even. Even though he was last seen on the big screen as long ago as 400 BC.

Yes, true that our lot does keep going back to motorcycles and cars close to a century old, and that we do indulge in a bit of lunacy every time something with a ‘New’ tag comes up. But we don’t deliver false promises. And that’s the difference. In the December ’09 issue of Filmfare, a little box-out was dedicated to this spectacular accumulation of bone marrow called Aditya ‘whatswithmyname’ Redij. And looking at his belly piercings, Jitesh Pillai’s clan had already decided that he was a ‘promising hotbod’ and was going to ‘set everything or the other on fire’. I last heard Nostradamus was nursing a Malibu in the South of France to rid himself of a terrible headache. Turning in one’s grave, as Mr.Pillai would express, is so 2009.

On an adjacent note, I am also in a bit of a sorry mental outlook towards Dear Diana the Alive. Her moral responsibility is to solve ‘love problems’ in the other end of Mid-Day, and Diana, I feel, is actually a man who ghost writes the bloody Q&A format column. I’m not saying it is certainly Vivek Oberoi, not yet atleast, but read carefully to see the subtle manly influences in each of the replies. Either it is Mr.Oberoi, or Diana needs my Mach3 Turbo Carrera 4S to do her armpits neat. Because the simplest response to the stimulus of a cheating boyfriend is to dump him, and flush him down. Or better still, sentence him to several years of rigorous Filmfare. The new sucker for the ‘Most Rubbish Magazine in the World’.