Calories & charisma
A.C. Tuli

A ballerina on the rolls of Moscow’s Bolshoi theatre was recently shown the door as her male partners had begun complaining that she had become a little too heavy for them to lift. In fact , the root cause of the trouble was the ballerina’s penchant for icecreams that was adding extra pounds to her weight. A politely dropped hint by the theatre management that she should go easy on icecreams was summarily brushed aside. The lady categorically announced that she could not imagine for herself a life without icecreams.

Come to think of it, it is not just ballerinas who have to watch their weight if they want to remain in business. In other walks of life too — sports and modelling, for instance — people have to watch their weight. Filmstars also have to be constantly on their guard against the charisma of calories, for excess of adipose tissue in their case means writing finis to their career in films. That explains why most of our leading actors and actresses nowadays have gyms at home, where they can regularly do workouts to keep themselves trim.

Strangely, film actors of olden times were perhaps not as figure-conscious as their counterparts are today. Maybe, like the Russian ballerina who has sacrificed her career at the altar of icecreams, actors and actresses of the black and white era also enjoyed tucking into their favourite dishes, throwing caution to the winds. So, doubtless, most of them looked overweight.

Particularly, the actresses of yesteryear were endowed with considerable embonpoint.

I remember a film glossy of the earlier days reporting an interesting incident that took place at the shooting of a film. The hero of the film was required to sweep the heroine off her feet while singing a duet with her in a deserted public park. Unluckily for the hero, the heroine of the film happened to be a strapping young woman built on a liberal scale. The thin, lanky hero, with hardly any muscle to speak of, was certainly no match for her. Still worse, the poor fellow did not have a very clear notion of what he was letting himself in for when he agreed to do the scene.

So, as the camera was focused and the clapper-boy gave the go-ahead signal, the hero buckled down to his task. Alas, the result was disastrous, that is, for the hero. Neither the director nor the cameraman could quite figure out how, even before he could blink his eyes, the hero came crashing down on the ground with the buxom heroine on top of him!

Times have changed. The Kareena Kapoors, Preity Zintas and Amisha Patels of today look poles apart from the actresses of yesteryear. The same holds good in the case of our leading men too. We no longer have paunchy, roly-poly heroes of yore, who, while enacting the role of a college student in films, themselves looked like dads of college-going boys. With not an ounce of misplaced flesh on their muscular bodies, today’s film heroes, even when they reach their mid-forties, look remarkably young, smart and sprightly.

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