Desi paparazzi comes of age

 

Press Club elections tarvatha lot of nice things happened. One of it is the subsidized working lunches for our brothers (why, maaku brothers undakudadha?). We even got to see Pokiri on one screen and the world cup final on the other. I left finally groggy-eyed and only to be rudely awakened on a Sunday morning by my colleague who wanted to warn my hubby that I am falling in love with Mahesh Babu just because my blog is filled with posts on Athidhi. Did I ever complain to his wife that he is filling the daily with Nayanatara’s pictures? We’ll say truce later on.

Getting back to business, let me update you about the conversation I overheard while watching AMAV. It’s about Ramgopal Verma stealing the story idea of Cheeni Kum and re-doing it as Nishabd. Amitabh plays the 63-year old chef who falls in love with the 36-year old Tabu who visits the restaurant. Incidentally his would be father-in-law is just a few years older to him. Amitabh looks cool with his pony and Tabu is said to have given a whale of a performance. While onscreen Bachchan impresses, off screen he is facing flak from the intellectuals.

People are miffed with his behaviour for playing the sulking old father to Abhishek, on one hand apologising for the stampede and inconvenience caused at his Juhu residence during the shaadi and on the other hand for the scribes’ nauseating public interest in his private matter. Bachchan is peeved because a guest took photos from his mobile phone and downloaded it on the internet. Yup everyone loves attention but the same goes over the top when the media gets too intrusive.

Remember the fracas Pawan Kalyan had with the media when his neice was getting engaged. But they were nice enough (unlike Amitabh) to invite the media when Chiranjeevi’s daughter got married. Our man knows and values public support to his career and was intelligent enough to request his fans not to attend the wedding and later hosted a lunch for them too. That is management.

Amar Singh says he had learnt a lot from the journalists. There was a time when the socialite cum socialist would throw lavish parties for all and one press person would be a regular to the wine and dine session. One fine day Amar Singh says he read the headline, “Amar Singh throws a Pushkar (mela) farewell Party” which helped him take a decision. The politician adds that the hint given in black and white publicly stopped him from throwing a party which looked like a mela again. He has learnt that Jaya Pradha, Abhishek, Jaya Bachchan, politicians and socialites from all walks of life will attend the party but after ‘khaana peena’ they will bitch about him.