Skip to main content

Celebrities and me


If I am asked to invite some “celebrities” to a dinner at my dining table, who would those “celebrities” be?

At the outset, let me clarify that this is a purely hypothetical and fictitious approach to the latest theme proposed by Indispire.  

The first three names that come to my mind are Arnab Goswami, Narendra Modi and Gurinder Singh Dhillon.  The last may need an introduction.  Mr Dhillon is the godman who controls quite a few empires led by a cult named Radha Soami Satsang Beas.  He is arguably the richest Indian if the wealth possessed by his cult in India alone (let alone those abroad) is reckoned.  He is worshipped as a god by a few million people in the country though he shies away from publicity of the sort I am giving him free of charge.  He is a celebrity though the Indian media has not discovered him yet except in a rare report like this.

Mr Modi with his political acumen and Mr Dhillon with his godman skills can work out some divine miracles or at least some human strategies for solving India’s myriad problems including Pakistan and China. We have come a long way from Swatch Bharat and Black Money Back.  Now the focus is on the potential Third World War being concocted at the Indo-Pak borders.  I would love to know what the godman who owns the largest area of land in the country has to say about this war for territory.  And I would love to see Mr Goswami bending his ego like the reed in a storm and trying to shout “The nation wants to know...” 

Indispire wants me to invite five celebrities, the sixth one on the table being me supposedly.  So let me invite Dr Manmohan Singh.  He will give me company, I hope, to be a silent observer even when Mr Goswami will declare him the culprit of the latest Indo-Pak showdown.  I will be delighted to learn the value of silence from Dr Singh.

What about the fifth chair?  Well, let god occupy that.  God is the silent listener always.  Let him/her/it learn, if he/she/it has not learnt it already, the games his creatures play in his/her/its name.

PS. This post is written for Indispire Edition 136 #Celebritydinner 


Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Considering that the post is to be categorised under humour at Indispire, your article foots the bill perfectly. Now the question remains as to who will foot the dinner bill, will it be the richest among them or, following the tradition of the godmen, he will demand a hefty sum from you for honoring you with his presence?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have understood godmen perfectly. They never give anything to others; they know only to receive, grab and grab and grab. Thank my stars, this is only an imaginary dinner.

      Delete
  2. A Tripuri friend of mine had a picture of him as his wallpaper on his mobile. He said with a wink that this guy do not preach hinduism but spirituality. I let him wink at his own line for there is more than what the eye sees. But yes, I would like to have Arnab Goswami as my guest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I knew a lot of his devotees. I had quite a few arguments with some of them at the gate of my school after the godman took over the school (and eventually killed it much as they assured us that they would run the school "for a hundred years".
      http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/New-management-trying-to-close-school-alleges-staff/articleshow/20402538.cms)

      One of the devotees met me outside the gate one day just to tell me that he had left the cult having realised that it was fraudulent to the hilt.

      Delete
  3. Very good post Sir. Very good indeed. The question put forth at the end is the icing on the cake.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Life compels us to reach such climaxes (or anticlimaxes).

      Delete
  4. Praise The Lord sir, yes if they give than they won't be of that importance to have the worldly things,respect,claim of being false god so,they would still find a way to grab land in some there place planet.
    Let's not wait for war it is already on

    ReplyDelete
  5. Will Arnab Goswami manage to coax Mr. Manmohan Singh ot of silence....?....I wonder.....:)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...