Talk time

If anyone had the good fortune of watching last night’s premier episode of ‘India’s Most Desirable’, then they must have gone to bed in good spirits after rolling on the floor laughing.

One look at host, Simi Garewal’s face and you knew that a lot of entertainment value would come simply from that. Simi was talking (and sometimes even laughing) throughout the episode but you never saw her actually move any muscle on her face to achieve this! How incredibly botox-ed could she have been to look like a cyborg on a beta-test.

This episode featured Ranbir Kapoor (“RK”), among the latest brood of actors to climb the Bollywood star chart. The gossip goes that this episode was a tit-for-tat to erstwhile girlfriend, actress Deepika. Deepika had suggested on an earlier talkshow that RK was a playboy of sorts. Apparently the Kapoor family machinery decided that they had to restore the ‘achha ladka hai’ image of RK.

And how!

The talk show turned out to be a prepatory session for something like ‘Rakhi Sawant ki Shaadi/Swayamvar’

First was the section on RK’s family. In a nutshell – a dad trying hard to play the image of ‘jolly go lucky’ father and a mom to beat all Indian moms with the ‘my son is the best' obsession. The end result was a long rethink about Ekta Kapoor's portrayls of mother-in-laws as possessive and devious. Perhaps not as unrealistic as one would imagine.

Onto the section on RK’s hobbies – a little ditty played on the guitar from Simi’s hits. Simi cooing delightedly (and eerily without actually moving her mouth).

Next onto the astrology section (Come on, we are traditional, we are Indian). Imagine Mallika Shehrawat in ‘Hiss’ as the snake lady. Now imagine if she had just finished consuming a whole deer and had saved it up for digestion later. (Pythons are known to do this).This is how the astrology lady looked. Python-Astrology lady gushed about RK meeting the love of his life soon and getting married in a couple of years.

Finally onto RK’s descriptions of what he would want in a girl and what kind of a boyfriend he would be.

At this point, I was sitting with my mouth wide-open. When I am about to be given insights of an upcoming actor, especially one who is reasonably talented and has a movie background, I fully expect to hear something about what he thought of his profession and his art. Instead I was watching a matrimonial ad of the type that would never make me click 'yes' on shaadi.com

No normal 28 year old should allow his mom and dad to spend so much time talking about what a great boy he is and what a brilliant husband he will make. Imagine an upcoming star doing this on live TV. One needs to be seriously deranged or seriously lacking good advice to do this.

I was past laughter and onto serious gag zone. So regretfully, I turned off the TV despite an innate curiosity to see what came next. Oh well, there is always next Sunday.