by Mayavi Morpheus » Thu Nov 25, 2004 2:28 am
I dunno if this post is related to topic... but tells you how media is influencing girls... wannabes.
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The Seedy Drive
(yes, I have seen it)
It was a decrepit hotel room in Manali. Punjabi bhangra was blaring in the background. The camcorder was hoisted on a tripod. Seventeen-year-old Anara Gupta was in bed with a husky young man she thought was a Mumbai film producer. Her cable operator "friend" had promised her the big guy could land her a role in a Bollywood film. Not for a minute could she have imagined that the footage of one hour and three minutes would end up as the prime source of entertainment for desi dudes on the web-as "Lala's sex vedio (sic)" presented by Desi Jatt. Or that it would be the hottest selling VCD in Jammu, available under the counter as the "exploits of Miss Jammu" for as little as Rs 300.
PICTURE SPEAK
MIS-TAKE: Gupta was arrested after her video (above) reached the Jammu Police
When the video finally reached the Jammu Police last month, it led to an investigation which gave Gupta the headlines she had always dreamed of, but not the kind of fame she was looking for. Now out on bail-Gupta is charged under the Indian Penal Code, the Information Technology Act, the Immoral Trafficking Act and the Cinematograph Act-she is virtually a prisoner in her tiny home which she shares with her mother and brothers. Her whole life, she thinks, is "finished''.
Gupta is not the only girl, growing up with stars in her eyes, who has found her way to stardom through sex-in Jammu, the media is already sniffing at another case of a beauty queen whose VCD is also doing brisk business. Across India, easily accessible technology is marrying rising aspirations to produce a succession of dreams-turned-to-dust. Be it in a small town in Kerala or in the heart of middle India, Raipur, young women are swapping hopes of having their names lit up in neon for either shame or worse, suicide. Take 17-year-old Saari S. Nair in Kilirur in central Kerala. Latha Nair, a seemingly respectable middle-aged woman, offered her a small part in a television serial provided she "obliged'' a few producers. Saari was allegedly sexually exploited and assaulted and last week, the teenager died of complications after a premature delivery. In the case of Anagha Nampoothiri, a temple priest's 14-year-old daughter in Kaviyoor, Kerala, the dream of a television career took an even deadlier turn. When a local newspaper mentioned her name in a sex racket, her entire family committed suicide.
Such is the extent of the phenomenon that filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, no slouch in matters of either sex or controversy, is already hard at work on a script which details such a case: a young man whose honeymoon in a hotel in Alibaug, Maharashtra, is captured on the spycam, put on the Internet, and he is accused of being involved in a pornographic film racket. Bhatt says the mass media has whipped up such an appetite for glamour in average India that the only way it can be fulfilled is through crime or glamour (read sex). "This is not the horror of marginal women being sold or bought. It is the greedy middle class' lust for a lifestyle which says that to get something you have to give something,'' says Bhatt, admitting that recently he has been propositioned by two leading ladies. Not being sexually deprived, he says, he refused.
The willingness to do anything for fame often has bizarre twists in a nation where technology is making a lot of things possible. Ask Raipur IG D.M. Awasthi. Last month, a packet containing a CD was delivered to his office by courier. In it he found a graphic movie starring two youngsters-the girl would have been 17-taken with a spycam hidden in a cupboard. Awasthi raided the local video shops and even surreptitiously visited some houses and hotels to match the sofa sets in the film, but could come up with no details regarding the boy and the girl. A software dealer in Raipur, however, has the clips on his mobile phone and showed them to India Today. "The video was apparently made by the boy to show it to his friends but one of them passed around the CD and now half the town has it on the cell phones," he says.
PICTURE SPEAK
OTHER SIDE OF LIMELIGHT: Jaiin accused Bhandarkar of exploiting her
The fame thing is clearly delusional. In Mumbai, starlet Pretti Jaiin became newschannel fodder when she accused film director Madhur Bhandarkar of sexually exploiting her between January 2000 and December 2003. Her evidence: a series of SMS messages which she had stored in her mobile phone. Talk to Jaiin about her accusation and she insists that it has made her a "celebrity''. "I wrote to the President of India about the trial and he replied. I asked for an appointment with Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and I got it within three days. I was invited to be the chief guest by over 15 organisations during the Navratri and Dussehra celebrations this year,'' she says.
It is a delusion that is fed by the media which has anointed stars such as Mallika Sherawat and now Priyanka Chopra, after her maneater act in Aitraaz. The bolder, the better, it seems. If a generation ago, being a beauty queen was the goal every Barbie girl nourished, now it is itemhood. Sometimes there is nothing like a sex scandal to power an actor's career. Jaiin's accusations were immediately followed up by the announcement that Bikau: On Sale, a year-old film starring her, had been picked up for release in an industry where blue films score a highly profitable strike rate in small-town India's cinema halls.
But not everyone has the luxury of saying no. After Gupta's arrest, the Jammu clip has become the Internet Indian's most sought-after download. "Everyone wanted to see it because it starred a former beauty queen,'' says Jay Neogi, a Los Angeles-based software consultant.
Gupta may well have become India's first homegrown hardcore porn starlet but that is not exactly what she meant when she told a news channel upon being crowned Miss Jammu in 2001: "Main life mein kuchh banna chahti hoon (I want to make it big in life)."
May the Fries be with you!
or Adnan Sami.
