Celebrity ....the stuff of spin doctors???....

Celebrity….....
In my childhood…..it was a fleeting glimpse......
Of Queen Elizabeth II.....in an open car....at the head of her motorcade....driving down Mount Road.......regal......distant...

Chacha Nehru.......
Dr Rajendra Prasad....
Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan....
We saw them all....whiz by..
A wave of the hand...a nod..and then gone...

A moment was all we got.....
To capture the image in memory.....camera-like...forever..
After all..
Celebrities had only that to offer…
A supercharged adrenalin high moment.....

So........
A glance at the Pavillion..from
The Nawab of Pataudi……
Or Abbas Ali Baig......
Or any of that kind...
Quickened the pulse....
Of adolescent moonstruck young things....
And became a treasured memory...

There was no TV then....
To beam in celebrity images into our drawing rooms...ad nauseum...
So the mystique remained...

It also helped that..
We did not hear at all...
About Prince Philip's tryst with constipation......
Or of Obama's morning breath...
No butler's revelations...
Or handyman's tales...

But we did not mind...
We survived!!!!!
And they did too!!!...
Their private lives left largely unscathed by the glare of publicity!!!

Indeed, there were those who shunned the attention that fame brings.......
Like the writer....JD Salinger.....a veritable recluse....
Not so today.....
A time of instant recognition and fame...
A new breed of celebrities have cropped up....

The Page 3 people....
Avid seekers of the spotlight...
We see their pictures....
Abhi and Deepak....
Minnie…and Menon.....
Smiling for the cameras....

Who are these people???
Celebrities for an evening???...or a day???...or a season??
Who knows??? Or even cares???!!!!!

Why is celebrity so downgraded???
Surely..
It is the exponential growth of the media on the one hand....
Balanced by the growth of the PR industry on the other....that is to be blamed..
The dog..and its bone..
The one demands……
The other creates...…
Myths....
The stuff that celebrities are mostly made of!!!!

A politically correct persona....
A carefully stitched tale..... full of events that appeal...
to every segment of the voting public..
And also withstands intense media scrutiny..
This is an absolutely must for those in the public eye.....
Especially in the West..

So an Obama describes his pot smoking days....
When his contemporaries remember him as a quiet law-abiding youngster.....
A Senator McCain claims to have been tortured...
When the warden of his prison says no such thing happened...
Where does fiction end..or fact begin??

As in the public space..
So too in the private space..
Family history...personal history.....
Are all..
Fertile ground for myth making...

And it keeps happening all the time..
All around us.....
So much ado about nothing...
Based on nothing!!...

The Bard it was who said..
To thine own self be true..
Only..
That would put the spin doctors out of business....
And then where would all the attention seekers go??

Makes one wonder???...
Is all history the stuff of spin doctors???
Is it all made up then?? Since back when??
That is the question!!.....

Until next time then....
Adieu!!