I hate you, but you’re right

This is a feeling that I very often have. It’s the feeling when your egos have already started engaging in a ‘cold war’ but your rational side is still controlling your conscious mind.

Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan are some of the many celebrities who I almost despise. I’ve hated them for the shoddy products they make, mostly. Then of course, the fact that they have become popular despite the shoddiness. But, in a few interviews, I’ve seen them make some really good points (especially about culture, marriage etc.). Points that I often make to corroborate my arguments. Not only that, their articulation of their ideas was nothing short of a critical thinker’s. Especially, Shahrukh -- he has become really clever in handling some of the most clichéd questions that he has had to face in his career. I don’t think his answers were as clever before. Only Sushmita Sen has managed to sound so intelligent right from the beginning. Ash was always the “look at me I’m a politically correct bimbo” type. Shahrukh was in the same band too, but lately he seems to be fed up with that. Or he’s just chosen this new “technique” to handle a more “intelligent and international” crowd. Whatever the reason is, his interviews are more watchable now.

But it’s still uncomfortable to hear sensible stuff from the people who you don’t like so much. Celebrities have multiple dimensions to like or hate. Their persona on screen, the products they give, then the people they are, the things they say (do) etc. I don’t know the ‘mode shifts’ that my mind goes through when I watch them perform and then giving interviews.
My ‘roast of VV’, at least some of my points, was instigated by what Gautam Menon had said in some interviews (about Oscar etc). It’s a bad movie, but what made my ranting really “harsh” was what he and Kamal had said off-screen, about the movie (it wasn’t a movie review, why should I distance myself from all that?). It’s sometimes too hard to dissociate the two. You hate the guy (girl/woman) in the movie for what he said in TV and you hate the guy in TV for what he did in a movie. Of course, sometimes they are the same.

I think it’s the same with blog readers. You might “hate” someone for things that he/she said in some posts, but can’t disapprove of what he/she says in other posts. That’s when you either downplay the post’s significance or pretend like you never read it. It doesn’t matter I suppose. It’s a favour we keep returning one another; a self sustaining ecological cycle that maintains a balance. A balance that is required to make sure there are no ‘superstar’ egomaniacs who get in to “masala blogging” before they end it for good (Lazygeek is probably a good example).

By the way, this post is not in response to anything that’s happening in this blog but to Shahrukh’s rather sensible interview in IBN. Well, it wasn’t totally sensible; he did get in to the “Islam is a secular religion” bullshit mode. But come on. It’s enough that he’s trying to be sensible, it’s too much to ask of him to be a radical.