Dear Shah Rukh puttar,
how are you? As far as I can tell from all the TV channels, I am
afraid you are not in the pink of health. I believe you were
stopped at Newark Airport and questioned for two hours by
ignorant Amreekan immigration officials. Imagine the
nerve of those people stopping a super-duper star like you.
Despite your immense popularity, these officers from New Jersey
didn’t know that you were Mr Star Bucks himself, beloved of
billions. All your fans at home and abroad were simply
shocked. Bada feel hua, ji. News channels also
felt your pain. Deeply. You had to be living under a rock not to
have heard that SRK had been detained for that extra
questioning. It was the mother of all breaking news. All the
news networks headlined the event that Friday, and it continued
through into the weekend. They kept looping your exclusives
bites.
"Paranoia is not an answer to terrorism," I
heard you say on NDTV, and also that "America should not
live in a bubble, and realise they are part of the world."
We heard that you were humiliated and glad that your children
were not with you. I also heard that Sony is starting a new
television show called Mujhe iss country se bachao. Funny
thing though, the legendary and celebrated Bob Dylan was also
stopped around in the same time zone you are in, and asked for
identification by the local police.
As the crow flies, this
happened two hours away from where you were. Apparently, they
didn’t recognise him. But I didn’t hear any reaction from
him or his publicist; there was not even a tiny little bit of
"Blowin in the Wind." Maybe Indian channels were just
not interested in Dylan’s travails, or maybe the iconic
poet-songster thought the officers were just doing their job.
In fact, CNN-IBN’s Face the Nation anchored by
Sagarika Ghose on Monday made much of the same point —
security before stars. It was left to panellists Lord Meghnad
Desai and Padma Rao on FTN to call a
racial/ethnic/religious profiling policy a brutal necessity in
these terror-ridden times. And on NDTV 24X7’s 60 Minutes,
sociologist Ashish Nandy also raised the issue of India’s
all-spreading VIP culture which demands special treatment.
SRK
ji, he might have a point, don’t you think? A poll at
the end of FTN confirmed that that Indians tended to
overreact when such things happen to them. Apparently, so do
politicians. Puttar, you will be glad to know when the
news was broken, you had the support from the highest quarters.
When she heard of the case, Minister for Information and
Broadcasting Ambika Soni said we should follow a tit-for-tat
policy, and the Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel also
sounded disgruntled, and said he was "looking into the
matter.’’
But one politician may have been happy at the
outcome of the incident — Minster for Health Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Because you know, puttar, he believes that watching
television is one way of reducing India’s population.
Apparently, he thinks TV can act like a condom and reduce the
number of children. And with all this coverage, I am pucca
positive that viewers were glued to the news.
We all know that
many Muslims have been and will continue to be questioned at
American airports. According to Emraan Hashmi, they are not even
given flats in Mumbai, your city, but we don’t hear anything
about their problems. Not from you or your friends.
Even when
former President Abdul Kalam had been unceremoniously frisked on
Indian soil, we didn’t have such an uproar. No, no, don’t
feel bad. It would be fair to say that a lot of your friends,
well-wishers and the greater SRK community supported you through
"sick and sin." I was almost expecting a rally outside
the American Consulate in Mumbai but then I remembered your name
is Khan, which probably put a full stop to any such proceedings
in Mumbai Meri Jaan.
But, fikar not. Your
close buddy Karan Johar sounded especially pained even though he
is busy giving the final touches to his film, My Name is Khan,
in which you star. Coincidentally, this film is also set in the
"United States of Paranoia," and may well have the
same plot line as your unsettling experience in Newark airport.
In fact, puttar, I am hearing some rumours that the whole
incident and its hype by the media could be a publicity stunt.
But I don’t believe that. We all know what people do for
publicity and TRPs. Didn’t you see that anchor of a crime show
on Brazilian television engineer murders just so his show would
get the best ratings? Hey Ram! I know you and K Jo are no
strangers to creating a buzz but this blend of advertising and
creating news would have required the genius of an Agatha
Christie, and the marketing skills of the Saatchi brothers. But
let’s just suppose for one teeny, weeny second that the whole
thing had been crafted and manipulated. Then, by God, what a
sensational idea.
Affectionately yours,
Aunty ji
