Khalid Mohamed

Okay, so ever since I have been in the cradle, I’ve been awestruck about how life continues to imitate popular entertainment. Take this: I went to buy a pair of cool spectacle frames last week. The salesperson took one look at me and said, “I have the right ones for you! The Kaun Banega Crorepati frames!”

Excusez moi. I must be half the height of Mr Amitabh Bachchan. Concurrently my face must be half of Mr B’s as well. So how would those black framed glasses sit on me? “KBC frames,” the counter salesman beamed. “Very much suiting you.” When I asked him if I could see something which wasn’t related to television or cinema, he shrugged, “Then how about no frames at all? Granny glasses? Like John Lennon’s. He wasn’t from TV or cinema.” Honest, I’m not exaggerating. The way things are going, I might just end up looking like a terrible cross between Lennon, Bachchan... and believe you this, George Clooney.
Yup. Clooney’s the dreamboat of our barbers — today known as hairstylists. So stylist Naeem brings over a rather dated edition of GQ magazine and then displays a close-up of Clooney, insisting that the way he wore his hair was perfect for my salt-and-pepper locks. Turned out to be a subterfuge. All that Stylist Naeem did was to run his fingers through my hair, here and there, rough them up a bit and then smiled broadly, “You like it?” I didn’t, and asked him for an old-fashioned snip.
The influence of the movies is escalating incredibly. That impression I can substantiate by citing the series of interviews I conducted with street children recently for a documentary. Not surprisingly, all the boys wished to be Dabanggs or Bodyguards, and heartbreakingly showed off non-existent muscles for the camera.
They also quoted Salman Khan lines of dialogue expertly. As for the girls, they broke into the Chikni Chameli dance steps, and raved about Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor. The kids may not get enough to eat, their clothes are torn, but talk of the movies to them and they light up like a thousand candles.
Sure, Bollywood has since time immemorial been an intrinsic part of everyday life. My grandmother, for instance, could not do without the bathing soap endorsed by the actresses right from the black-and-white era. Neither could my bunch of uncles do without their Rajesh Khanna indigo guru kurtas, like my nephews today can’t do without the Karan Johar-Manish Malhotra-designed wedding wear at sangeet ceremonies.
Bollywood works and how. In fact, an advertising agency’s honcho told me lately, that their clients are rarely impressed with films and print ads which don’t feature movie or sport stars. He disclosed that his agency had to come up with a concept in a couple of days for a cosmetic product. They thought of a simple idea: Sonakshi Sinha holding the product before the camera and saying sweet somethings. The product’s sales went up by gazillion per cent immediately.
But it wasn’t always like this, not to such an intense degree at least. In the course of a conversation with Shyam Benegal, who started off as an ad filmmaker in the 1960s, I learnt that there was a time when top movie stars would avoid endorsements. “Only the seniors like David and Ashok Kumar would agree to lending their faces for ads,” he recalled. Today, the story’s come around 360 degrees. See even the spectacle frames, unbranded and unendorsed, are pitched to me, as if wearing them would make me a Crorepati overnight. Sigh.