Heard the One about SRK’s Son?

Gossip and the tragedy of the film journalist

In 2004, some naughty kids from Juhu brought to Mid Day’s office a cellphone video—called an MMS back then—of young Kareena and Shahid Kapoor playing tongue hockey, looking lost in love, at a nightclub called Rain. The two were dating and had never made an effort to hide it. Mid Day ran the images and news channels turned the video ‘viral’, much before the term had been coined. Kareena slapped a lawsuit for Rs 10 crore. Much shame is attached to public displays of affection in India. Love is too private a matter. We prefer to noisily pray in public instead.

Hauled over coals by a bunch of college kids for working for Mid Day, I asked if they could recall any other story from that day’s paper, let alone the cover story on pre-electoral factionalism among Bohra Muslims, which took up about 90 per cent of the front page. They couldn’t. More often than not, I told them, we get the journalism we deserve.

Despite some phenomenal reporting since, the Shahid-Kareena images may well be Mid Day’s most consumed item. It’s not news, and is only marginally better than gossip—because it’s 100 per cent true.

We’re obsessed with gossip about filmstars because they look so much better than us, and are surrounded by people even hotter than them. Their sex lives piques our imagination. We envy them. Peering from billboards, from giant screens, they reduce us to common folk. They look perennially happy. It appears they do no work.

We envy politicians too. In our perception, they exude tremendous power and make easy money at our expense, while we struggle. But the natter around netas relates to kickbacks and corporate deals; nobody really wants to know who ND Tiwari is sleeping with. Most Indian politicians have been dull and unattractive.

Television is why we prattle about politicians so much now. The visual medium inspires a false sense of familiarity. We see a face, we feel we know the person. Lately, it’s also turned journalists into celebrities.

Film gossip has deep roots in India. Millions were privy to the romances of Dev Anand and Suraiya, or Raj Kapoor and Nargis, or Hema Malini’s various suitors—Jeetendra, Sanjeev Kumar, an already married Dharmendra.

In the 70s, feisty tattler Devyani Chaubal upped the ante for gossip in Bollywood, reporting live from bedrooms for her hit fortnightly column in Star & Style. Chaubal, I’m told, was herself dating Rajesh Khanna at one point, which says a lot about the level of access she had. It may not have resulted in great reportage, but it certainly generated good trash, with most rumours substantiated by rival filmstars and disgruntled producers.

By the late 2000s, a yawning gap had developed between what was now a thoroughly corporatised film world and energetic new reporters. Publicists had become gatekeepers, doling out banal film journalese—‘break-up’, ‘patch-up’ and other ‘plugs’ for interviews or ‘junta bytes’—generally before a film’s release. The sheer quantum of film gossip generated daily made it impossible for stars to establish a strong rapport with individual reporters.

This safe distance is ideal for quality journalism. The finest lead story I read in an entertainment supplement this week: John Abraham’s wife will visit him in May! It’s not news. It’s not gossip. The story is not even attributed to Abraham. I’m not sure if editors would ever similarly mistreat the sports pages.

There isn’t one mainstream Indian publication devoted to films. Fanzines make a spectacle of personal lives, gossip- mongers create alternate versions of PR pap: ‘You know, Shah Rukh’s son is actually his grandson.’ ‘Nope. He’s actually Karan Johar’s son.’ ‘You know, right, that Amitabh Bachchan was once dating Aishwarya Rai.’

An anonymous quote often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt goes: ‘Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.’ Try the former two at a party—you’ll be a bore. But watch how the party gravitates toward the 25-year-old film journo in the room, looking to discuss celebrities—acquaintances common to all. The sad part is the journo has no gossip, because there is little access, and nobody wants her to write about films, which was the reason she joined the profession in the first place.

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