SRK’s pelvic thrusts and dud contestants

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Kya aapne kabhi kisi shiny-shiny, bright-bright star ko slowly-slowly implode hote dekha hai? Maine dekha hai, in ongoing installments, on my television screen. And it’s not pleasant viewing. It is heart wrenching.

I first caught a glimpse of the superstar’s self-flagellation on the night of those wishy-washy awards, Filmfare. He jumped up the stage to eulogise Amitabh Bachchan with itna zabardast hyperbole that even Rekhaji would have retched. “The greatest actor in the world... we are lucky to breathe the air that he breathes... we are lucky to walk the earth on which he walks...”, Shah Rukh Khan said, and with each syllable at least 20 of his toned cells imploded.
Challo, I thought, Yash Chopraji must have put a wad of cash to his head. So he had to. But then, when I switched on Zor Ka Jhatka (Imagine TV), it was confirmed: Shah Rukh Khan has set himself on fire.
Zor Ka Jhatka is Takeshi Castle without the cute-cute Japanese people, and without Jaaved Jaffery’s potty commentary. Zor Ka Jhatka has middle aged, C-grade celebrity contestants — Dimpy Mahajan, Mink, German lady Claudia, some pehalwan ladies, some pehalwan gents, some greying TV stars, some Bigg Boss losers, some Miss This and Miss That — and Shah Rukh Khan, the imploding star.
In Argentina, contestants are put in short lycra thingies and made to dive, drop, run, fall, smash their heads, shoulders, chins and chests on large cushioned items, get beaten by long, spinning ladles, while back in a studio with a few large screens and no audience, SRK does pelvic thrusts and quarrels with his doppelgangers — various avatars of Raj, Rahul, Suri, Don, vagehra. Sometimes, actors whose films are up for release also come, to plug their film. In return, SRK makes them shout and scream and feign tension at the goings-on on his large screens.
It’s all scripted. The action in Argentina took place many days ago and everyone already knows who the winner is. Zor Ka Jhatka is a dud copy of a dud Amrikan show, (Wipeout), and the only idea the creative heads at Imagine TV could come up with to make this dullness watchable was to give SRK Rs 2.5 crore per episode and make him babble.
Nothing wrong in making money. And no one is turning to Imagine TV for a Freudian lecture on why fully-grown humans would willingly throw themselves on large, round, red, bouncy balls, but the drivel that emanates from SRK would make even gurgling rug rats squirm and scream, "Shame shame, puppy shame...
I toh felt immense sadness watching a man who is loved and cradled tenderly in warm desi hearts slit his wrists on a channel that usually passes off cretins doing cretinous things as entertainment. It was like watching a Thornbird impaled and bleeding to death. And the thorn was not even worthy of this Thornbird.