Ashok Banker
Mahesh Bhatt is angry.
And, as he usually does when he's angry, he's singing.
It's an old and familiar song, one we've heard often before. He has become quite good at it, too. Good enough to put on one of the live concerts made-for-television that seem to be so popular these days.
He could call it Bhatt... Naturally, or something along those lines.
The song, as you have probably guessed by now, is called Aye mere media ke logon. It goes something like this:
Ay mere media ke logon
Zara aankh mein bhar lo paani
Woh star banne the unki
Zara yaad karo qurbaani
(My friends in the media, shed a tear for those stars and Bollywood professionals who sacrificed so much for all of us.)
The song isn't Bhatt's originally. It has been sung by a great many renowned singers, including other producers, stars and flunkeys. star chamchas.
The song is intended to invoke a sense of guilt, remorse and sympathy in us. To move us to feel for the plight of those suffering filmstars and industry stalwarts.
As we all know, they are in a very bad way right now. You can see just how bad they are from a few incidents that made front page headlines recently. The Hrithik Roshan-Nepal controversy. The Chori Chori Chupke Chupke expose. The Salman-Ash offscreen scandal. The Mohabbatein-chappal-Gayatri mantra episode. The IT raids.
And any number of other smaller media reports about the nexus between crime and Bollywood, the sexual shenanigans of filmstars, the alleged misbehaviour or alleged comment of a star, income concealment, tax evasion, star marriages or divorces, hits or flops. In short, anything that depicts Bollywood or its denizens in a negative light.
The reports have been a source of worry to the bold and beautiful superstars and veterans of our great film industry.
The false reports are the worst, of course, like the Hrithik Roshan controversy or the Mohabbatein-chappal-Gayatri mantra controversy, both of which were obviously politically and had no basis in fact.
Bhatt's suffering is far from over. He's also chanting a lament about any and every press report, film review, news item, TV interview, news story that's even remotely related to Bollywood and its wonderful people.
If I understand the lament correctly, it's basically saying that the media has no right to torture Bollywood this way. To report on the arrest of a producer with proven links to an underworld don. To televise footage of a billionaire film financier and diamond merchant who has financed films produced by the producer with underworld links.
To print front page photographs showing film stars who are being questioned for their phone conversations with underworld dons and their associates.
In short, to show the film industry in any negative light whatsoever. This is the essence of Bhatt's song and the whole industry seems to rising to chant it in chorus. Although nobody croons it as eloquently as the Bhatt.
Or perhaps it's just the fact that he has more time on his hands since he has retired from making movies. And as so many former stars-turned-pop singers have demonstrated, singing is a popular choice as a second career for filmwallahs.
Bhatt has every right to sing this tune. In cases like the Hrithik-Nepal issue and the Mohabbatein-chappal issue, he even hits the right notes.
It is the media that is the butt of Bhatt's dirge. It is the media that he holds responsible for all this negative publicity.
When Bharat Shah was shown on news channels, Bhatt blamed the media for being profit-hungry, for being sensationalist, for being irresponsible.
Yet the medium through which we hear Bhatt's song happens to be the same media he's criticising!
The freedom he has been given to sing this radical anthem is the same freedom that allows the media the right to report the news in the way it sees fit.
As any journalist knows, nobody, let alone a rich, powerful, famous person, wants to have his or her mistakes exposed.
If we were to succumb to the magical spell of Bhatt's song, we would all be singing Hosannas to Bollywood every day.
And ignoring the slightest whiff of scandal.
