Twitter Twatter on Bollywood

You can stalk Bollywood celebrities on their blogs, but not many will really ever satisfy the voyeur in you

What Twitter tells me about Bollywood is that I am wasting my time reading its tweets. For a long time, I have been, intermittently, going to Amitabh Bachchan’s blog and taking everything that he lays out for the media on the chin. When he said that slanderous news items made it to the front page but clarifications are buried inside, I nodded in agreement. I read with relish his accounts of being a struggler and his memories of his parents. I got a slice of his life and I thought it was an interesting life. When I went to Ram Gopal Varma’s blog, not only did I get a slice of all the evil he has done but the abuse he rains down on those who are brave enough to comment on him. It satisfied the voyeur in me.

Early this month, Abhishek Bachchan joined a trail of Bollywood celebrities who are now tweeting and, on the strength of my online experience with his father, I joined him immediately as a follower. So far this is what I know of him: he’s in the movie Paa, he gets caught in traffic jams, he likes Chelsea, it rained, he woke up, more Paa, more Paa and more of Paa.

I follow other Bollywood celebrities too and they are not more illuminating. There’s Preity Zinta. This is what Twitter tells me about her.  She had flu, like everyone else she can be happy and sad, her day was hectic, she loves Sachin for his 4s and 6s, she’s doing a course abroad in negotiations. Strangely, I didn’t find her plugging a movie but then I deduced that if she’s doing a course abroad, she’s probably not doing any films. I got little information about things which interested me: like her break-up with Ness Wadia or how they decided on player prices for the IPL.

The most interesting tweets by Vivek Oberoi, who I follow for some reason even I cannot fathom, were clumsy 30-word match updates on the Hyderabad ODI. He also ponders a lot though it is not always easy to understand what he is trying to say. Like this tweet: ‘I’ve traded my innocence for experience, my ego for humility and my complacency for a raging fire in the belly. I like the new me’.

Then there are others like Karan Johar and Riteish Deshmukh, who give me useless updates on their life. ‘Shooting cancelled’ or ‘meeting with Tarun’. But that is still tolerable. The man who really tests my endurance is Mahesh Bhatt. From him comes a non-stop litany of aphorisms. Example:  ‘The consumer’s mind is full of emotions that are connected to experiences which when fused with your brand can do wonders for it.’

Whenever I read him, I feel like I am in class.

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