Fat chance at criticism

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Aaj-kal real aur engaging entertainment ke liye either I sing in the bathroom or switch on a news channel. Ab last week ko hi le lo. News channels, busy playing Kaun Banega President, suddenly got distracted by a news item that can only be summed up thus: Yeh neeli-neeli ankhen, yeh mote-mote gaal...

Hua yun, that Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan, who delivered Chhota B five months ago, had been photographed looking fatty-fatty, golu-molu. Haw, hai! Newspaper supplements and entertainment news aunties went mental. This was a calamity of stupendous proportions and needed a comment and analysis from everyone on every aspect, including the impact fat celebrities have on the future generations of Indians.
This line of probing appalled our liberal and fatuitous news channels and they started asking, “Akhir kyun? Why must Aishwarya be made to feel bad about not shedding mommy fat?”
There were supplementary questions to this: Isn’t this sexist? Why isn’t Sachin Tendulkar being taken to task over his strange, straight hair? Must all celebrity mommies be like Lara Dutta, Angelina Jolie and Posh Spice and shrink to their pre-pregnancy size the instant they deliver babies? Kya celebrities ko hak nahin hai obese hone ka?
Many talking heads arrived in studios to hyper-ventilate. Some said that because Aishwarya ab sirf Ma, actress ya Bachchan bahu nahin hai, but is a brand, like Amul butter, she has no right to go rancid. Others said ma-ki-mamta has a high calorie count and should be embraced with wobbly tyres.
Hmmm. Yaaa. I have one word for them liberals: Schadenfreude. You see, many decades ago the Germans figured that often humans are irrationally delighted by the misery of others, so they gave this emotion the aforementioned name. And that’s what all this joking and gloating and poking over Ms Aishwarya’s weight is about.
It’s not fair. It’s cruel. It’s anti-feminist. We are all idiot victims of an elusive body image. Ya, ya, it’s all that. But it is also quid pro quo.
Aishwarya’s rigid beauty, blue eyes, translucent skin, her bizarrely fabulous hair and figure were all rubbed in our faces from magazine covers, billboards, TV screens, even sabun packets. We could buy the diamond she was flightily flaunting, but we knew we could never be Aishwarya. It was a taunt. She was not just peddling a cream, she was dumping low self-esteem on every aunty, uski beti, uski behen and uski saas.
Miss World could do no wrong. Her smile was practised and perfect. When she spoke, it was bland PR speak. She called her father-in-law Pa, had no saas troubles, and she married a tree before marrying Abhishek. So now when we see her with flabby cheeks and a new chin, we see a crack in that smug, flawless persona — a vulnerability, a failing. And we can’t help but finger it. Because, madam, you really are worth it.