BY BISWADEEP GHOSH
Have been slogging hard like Animal Farm’s Boxer for a long time. Have had eight-day weeks, 25-hour days, five-six-seven sleepless days on the trot…all those wonderful experiences that are oh-so inevitable when you belong to the tribe of scribes. Have survived on stale vada pao when the belly has been assailed by pangs of hunger in the middle of the night. Have drunk litres of badly made tea, smoked countless cancer sticks, created cacophony with the keyboards for hours and hours just to see a story emerge, slowly, steadily, coherently, right in front of me on the screen the way it is happening now. Have made some money also, making me a hazaarpati for all those hours of manual if not mental labour.
But then, today I realise that what happens to you is decided the day you are born. Any mutiny against destiny – like my contemplating a sex change operation while being so ugly and on the wrong side of 30 – is sheer stupidity. Since I have started viewing life like a philosopher clown would, I have also started believing (somewhat desperately) that the entire notion of rebirth is true. So, if I don’t cause harm to others even at the cost of subverting my professional fortunes during my present term on earth, I could well be reborn as a beautiful girl in my next life.
What will I do should that happen, and which I sincerely hope does? Even if I am born in Honolulu – don’t know whether or not rebirth takes geographical boundaries into consideration, therefore – I will take a flight and come to Mumbai straightway. I will meet all the producers in town with a beautifully shot portfolio and, if one of them happens to have signed a director like Steven Spielberg, I will even ride the back of a dinosaur instead of just a buffalo in an item song. Dance, dance, just dance my way into the hearts of everyone: that is what I shall do, even if I have to partner a man who is thrice my size and doesn’t look good at all. How does it matter anyway? The masses will pay to ogle at me and, for letting them do so, the producer will give me a cheque that is as substantial as the man I would have danced with!
Five minutes of fame, resulting in five crore bucks because at least five event management companies would flock towards me and ask me to do that one number in five different shows for one crore each! Then, five more. Then, five more. Shows would multiply, so would the cheques, and I will go to town giving interviews about how life post-celebritydom feels. Big pictures splashed in newspapers, my face staring at people from hoardings, Lexus one day, Merc the next, being Bajaoed on a channel’s celebrity show the day when I choose to walk for a while. God, what a great life that is going to be! You find my approach towards life a little vague na? So be it. I have no desire but to be reborn as Vaguena and lead the life of an item number for the rest of my life.
Kaanta Laga? If so, acchha laga?
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