Gee whiz! Celebrities drive up in photogenic cars to utterly camera-friendly gates of villas, penthouses and 100-BHKs. The paparazzi click the gorgeous guests, the photos are speed-splashed in the entertainment pages as extra nourishment to go with your muesli in skimmed milk. And if you’re a film journo, you’re quizzed, “Luckee you must be going to so many of those Bollywood parties! Enjoying a lot no?”

Once there were film producers, now there are CEOs, COOs, COOCOOs GMs, MDs and XYZs. In fact, practically every film boasts of so many banners, sponsors, tie-ups, and miscellaneous collaborators that you’re not quite sure who contributed what, when and why to the final product.

They hate it so much that they love it. It means wetting the lips, separating the upper and lower lips to suggest a hint of the pearly whites, darting desire — carnal or vegetarian — via brandy-hued contact lenses, exposing mid-riff, er cleavage if it’s to be a magazine cover pic, and well, strike a haughty pose which spells s..e..x..y.

It was supposed to be their ‘mother’ tongues, so to speak. With the advent of time and linguistic flexibility, though, Bollywood films are no longer being made in the Hindi language. Welcome hybrid speak?

Long, long ago in New York, my sling bag containing my passport, dollars, keys to a friend’s apartment, were stolen.

Investment has become the catchword.

Call it vanity or plain bad manners. The very moment a measure of popularity aka stardom is achieved, success bloats a film personality’s head. Normal behaviour gives way to put-on smileys, a la-di-dah-dum-dum manner of speaking, and worst of all, the conviction that the world revolves around their axis.

kay, so you’ve heard of gazillions being paid as movie star fees. You’ve heard of directors demanding multi-crores as salary packets. You’ve surely heard of swanky shoots in the Swiss Alps so that the hero and er... his girlfriend can escape Mumbai’s scorching summer to scorch on the ski slopes.

A sly, throwaway shot: While the court proceedings are hotting up, the judge snatches a moment to use his eye drops. And there are more such close-to-life vignettes, like the aged mother who’s unsure about touching the mangled remains of her son. Or the wanna-glow heroine ambling through the streets, her state of mind as restless as the horde of fluttering pigeons. You’re hooked.

Interviews with film personalities can be as exciting as Grand Prix racing. Or they can be as crashingly boring as a politician’s election sermon.