Pop star at 47, a fairy tale in the making?

A dowdy, matronly, apparently virginal cat lady from the backwaters of Scotland has done it! Susan Boyle has become the talk of the town (yet not Indian towns) and topic of water cooler gossip around the world.

As a participant of Britain’s Got Talent, a talent hunt show in UK, she generated a collective gasp of appreciation from a skeptical audience and panel of judges waiting to tear her to pieces. And why would THAT generate this mass hysteria, you may ask with genuine wonder. And I might agree with you whole heartedly but for the fact that critics and admirers across the seven seas have been waxing eloquent over her for the past 2 weeks.

Well check out her photograph and you’ll accept that she looks more like a frumpy, middle-aged couch potato than an aspiring professional singer. And that’s where the audience, used to the vocal driveling of pretty plastic pop aspirants, got the surprise of their lives when she serenaded them with her spectacular rendition of ‘I Dream A Dream’ from Les Miserables. To the audience and judges credit, there was a long round of heart felt applause and well deserved coining of the “NEXT SINGING SENSATION”, a title so far reserved for wannabe Miley Cyruses (Britney Spears having gone out of Teen favor).

The producers must be patting their ego-laden backs for having casually presented the world with such a ‘discovery’, though obviously they knew what a rough (only in appearance) diamond they had on their hands since all participants have to go through a screening process. Yet they predictably tried to make this a grand ‘onscreen’ discovery (what else in this age of reality TV) by presenting her as part of the notional group of misfits and weirdoes that are specially selected for entertainment in between the serious business of Talent Hunt.

The in studio audience and the acerbic Simon C. looked down their noses at this frumpy woman and nearly booed her before being flabbergasted by her voice. This raises two questions:

As much as Susan Boyle is being promoted as a singing sensation, her looks are getting plenty attention too (quite a few observers already suggesting an extreme makeover). The fact that she is 47 and noones idea of pretty stumps everyone, enough to show how we now expect all packages to be complete, pretty face=pretty voice or vice versa. Hence the first question, would there be as much celebration for Susan Boyle (in just a preliminary round of talent hunt) if she were another pretty young thing? Does skill matter more when the skilled is marred or ugly because it warms our heart to see beauty (of voice) juxtaposed with ugliness (of face and body)?


Also Susans’ deprived background (she is barely trained, never employed and has for the past few decades solely looked after her ailing mother, hence no boyfriend) is being bandied about as much as praise for her voice. This leads to the second question, does her humble background add/lead to the aura around her obvious skill? Would everyone be as awestruck if she sang like a nightingale AND was a silk stocking trust fund kid? Do we tend to romanticize struggle, refer Kailash Kher and Rabbi Shergill?

Despite the discomfort of these questions, Susan qualifies to be called a Jewel, deserving the 50 million hits to her Youtube video (historical) and is the object of adoration of the many fan sites devoted to her. Whatever the result of the show, she has temporarily won the hearts of the public, Oprah Winfrey AND Good Morning America producers among others.

Defying all logic she has stayed in public memory for more than a week. It is to be seen if she manages to compete with elections and IPL to attract the attention of Indian media soon. Just remembered Abhijeet Sawant….where art thou?

PS: check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

Bleed India?

Its 5 years and another election, another season to bleed the country dry! Who says that we have a slow economic growth rate or even that recession has hit the world economy? Sample this:
§ 14% of national contestants are corepatis
§ Compared to 2004, some contestants assets have grown by a whopping 3000% (and if these are industrialists, career politicians are not far behind)
§ The highest figure this year comes from congress candidate L. Rajagopalan who has DECLARED assets worth 299 crores, understandably so as he is the owner of Lanco.
§ The Karnataka Congress president R.V. Deshpande has finally declared his assets (after refusing to do so) and has shown 1611% growth from 9cr. to 145 cr. But he is a MLA so I suppose it doesn’t count.
§ Both the Congress and BJP are neck and neck with 12 crorepatis each in Karnataka Assembly of the 42 sitting crorepati MLAs. But again it’s a regional figure and doesn’t count as much; after all Capt. Gopinath still comes a distant 7th on the richest contestants list this year.
§ In Delhi a contestant, BL Sharma, declared that after years as a sitting BJP MP (1991, 96) from Delhi (having trounced HKL Bhagat) has nothing more than a paltry Rs.500 in hand and Rs. 15 lakhs in his wife’s name. Oh the Indian politician, nothing but serving the poor and needy!

Everyone heard how NONE of our esteemed national leaders even own a car! Ofcourse they don’t, when there is an entire official cavalcade at their disposal, what better use can there be of the taxpayers’ money!

In all this discussion, we never notice how noone pays a cents notice to the assets declaration of the left party contestants. Surely not because they, in their Bourgeois hating, have no assets altogether?

Well that’s it then, even though our salaries may be increasing at snails pace, someone can claim to be part of the continuously SHINING INDIA.

The Flying Objects of our desire?

With all this discussion going on about the shoe felony….given the chance and reason, who would you throw a footwear of choice at (lets keep it limited to footwear though God knows all of us would like to throw much more deadly objects at quite a few people)?

Let’s stay with politics for a while and contemplate on why Mr. Chidambaram became the target of the projectile. For obvious reasons it could not have been his predecessor, too much of a lightweight to be taken seriously. We all would have laughed it off like we do while throwing empty peanut shells at monkeys in their cages at the zoo.

Could it have been Mr. J. Tytler, the actual intended of the INTENT of throwing? Can’t say if Mr. Tytler puts himself in the eye of such a projectile often. Afterall all those who sin, sleep light and tread nimbly. Alternately if such a thing would have happened there could have been a general national murdering of shoes, just imagine a life without shoes? What would the kachcha wala RSS do, no brown shoes to go with the shirt shorts and topi? So there would finally be common ground among the Congress/allies and BJP/allies to not let such a thing happen.

The PM does not make a fair target (no comments there) and the SUPER PM would make a poorer choice (women should only get shoes, belans, things on fire, they themselves thrown at them in the privacy of their homes not publicly).

Let’s take Mr. Advani now, would I not love to hurl a thing or two at him? But wouldn’t Mr. Modi make a better statement (since he so loves to hurl hate speech at everyone around for being born non-hindu), or maybe Mr. Lalu (for having the gall to appoint his wife as CM and setting an example for his followers in crime) or maybe even Mayawatiji for having her goons hurl punches at non-birthday chanda-contributing citizens of her STATE. This is just too much confusion; I’d rather save my chappals for another pollitical day.

Or maybe I’ll just add injury to broken injury by sending away a thought or two towards SRK for his hairbrained schemes of multiple captains.

But truly I’d throw a couple of desi ghee laden laddoos at Aishwarya Rai for continuing to be as fake and frigid as ever, so unlike the warmth of ghar-ka-desi-ghee and boondi ke laddoos.

The curious case of the FLYING SHOE!

And suddenly A humble piece of footwear has become the MASCOT for political dissent. If George W. Bush and Wen Jiabao (the Chinese premier) are to be believed, the shoe is mightier than the pen, instantly imprinting embarrassment, indelibly!

Our suave Chidu is now in exalted company.

Gone are the days of the humble pie (Bill Gates), green goo (Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise) and champagne (Leonardo De Caprio), the FLYING SHOE has arrived.

Just a thought……would it have made more of a statement if the object thrown had been the lowly CHAPPAL rather than a Reebok, size 8 or otherwise? Apart from giving the chappal sales a push (if tales of surging Turkish made shoes in Iraq are to be believed), would it have given the BJP combine more righteous reason to harangue about the UNINDIANESS of the Sikh riots?

Never mind the gracious pardon from ‘Chidu’, Tytler remains free as a bird AND the grand old partys’ candidate for the umpteenth time.