Mumbai : These past couple of months we have witnessed a number of female Bollywood actors giving media interviews wherein they have laid bare their deepest, darkest secrets.
It started with Deepika Padukone talking about her battle with chronic depression. People were shocked to learn that a beautiful, young and successful film star could suffer from such a debilitating mental condition. Much media brouhaha surrounded Deepika’s brave and honest confession.
The usual dial-a-quote psychiatrists weighed in with their expert comments while some cynics carped that this was merely a ploy to garner publicity. “Watch this space,” sniped one social commentator, “I won’t be surprised if Deepika soon reveals that she is commercially endorsing some clinic or tablet to combat depression.” The young heroine has appeared in no such advertisement to date, and must be mightily disappointed that even her women’s empowerment video has faced a vitriolic backlash.
The moral majority is outraged at her insistence on sleeping with whoever she likes, be it man or woman, inside or outside of marriage. “Let Deepika have sex with whoever she wants, that’s her choice,” moaned a mother of two teenage girls, “but doesn’t she realise that she is corrupting young women who look up to her as a role model?”
Then the talented Kalki Koechlin, whose separation from husband Anurag Kashyap has been breathlessly reported by the media, revealed that, like her spouse, she too had been sexually molested as a child. While Kalki should be lauded for her courage on shining light on the malaise of child sexual abuse, some sceptics questioned the timing of such a startling confession that conveniently coincided with her new film’s release.
Most recently, Amyra Dastur, the south-Bombay-Cathedral-school-educated heroine of the forthcoming Emraan Hashmi starrer Mr. X, gave a front page interview in a glossy newspaper supplement enumerating a roster of revelations starting with her troubled childhood, anger management issues, fear of failing and flying, cost of psychiatric visits, and even her brother’s Attention Deficit Disorder.
Rather than discuss her film, her career or hopes and aspirations, it’s interesting to note that this ingénue preferred making a public confession of her personal demons.
Screen goddesses of yesteryear had a certain mystique about them and were worshipped from afar. And while they suffered from heartbreak, failure, depression, alcoholism, and some even committed suicide, the public was rarely privy to their private pain until it was too late.
With the new generation, it seems that we have far more information about our young celebrities than we want, or even care, to know. Several international starlets have acquired enormous fame and wealth by leaking their own sex tapes. Our reality shows are peppered with bawling contestants whose hysterical rants result in higher television
ratings. Nothing is sacrosanct any more, in this, the Age of Information.
Perhaps our young stars feel that making cathartic continued…
