An obsession with the self called fame

Baby, look at me, and tell me what you see
You ain’t seen the best of me yet
Give me time I’ll make you forget the rest
I got more in me, and you can set it free
I can catch the moon in my hand
Don’t you know who I am?
Rem

ember my name
Fame, I wanna live forever, I’m gonna learn how to fly
I feel it comin’ together, people will see me and cry
Fame, I’m gonna make it to heaven, light up the sky like a flame
I’m gonna live forever, baby remember my name!

From the musical Fame and it is like an arrow that goes straight through the heart. I wanna live forever. I wanna live after I am gone. I wanna have a road or a chowk or a bridge named after me and I want millions of people to mourn my death and I want my death to be called a someone-Jayanti. I want all this and more and the tragedy or rather the irony is that I would be dead and gone and I would not even be alive to see all this!
Fame! We crave it. Ache for it. Live for it and die for it. We want us to make a difference and nowhere do I see this more than where I work, the need to be known permanently in an otherwise temporary world. I don’t know what the desire to be known is fuelled by but I have begun to know the prerequisite for the need for fame.
It’s called being in love with your self or being absolutely self-obsessed. The point here then, is it possible to seek fame without being in love with your self?
No, it is not and that is the simple fact. You may agree with me or disagree, stomp your feet, throw a tantrum but this is the honest truth. We are a breed of self obsessed lot that get our validation only by the recognition of others.
I have seen the house of an actress that has so many of her own pictures adorning the walls, that there is no need to even paint the walls, they are all covered sufficiently. The awards on the mantlepiece and the eyes drifting left to right at a party wondering how many people noticed you since you made the entry. It’s all about me and we cannot want fame till we feel that our worthless lives are really worth remembering.
I think living a life of happy anonymity takes a tremendous amount of security in oneself.
All the actors have their own PR machinery that constantly feeds us a bit about their lives on a regular basis lest we forget them and lest we forget who is ahead in the race. There was one actor I knew who avoided that kind of stuff and that was Aamir Khan and he too has joined the fame machinery. Welcome Aamir! It makes me happy to see that you are like the rest of us.
The greatest curse for a fame hungry person is the curse to die after his fame does. Me? I wanna live for ever, people will remember me after I die or so I hope! Unashamed in my fear of anonymity and hungry for validation, I am strong enough to see my greatest weakness. Are you?

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Review By Khalid Mohamed

Talaash

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