Kajol’s Intolerance Speech: Hard to Ignore, Impossible to Tolerate

Kajol’s speech on intolerance was disappointing at so many levels. How we wish we had someone else to blame for it (Photo: Twitter)

When Kajol’s name was announced by The Telegraph for its intolerance debate, I took it with a pinch of salt. After all, fellow actor Anupam Kher’s name was also a part of the bench that would debate, for or against the current national obsession, yes, nationalism.

Expectedly, Anupam Kher gave a rousing speech, rationalism be damned. The perennial supporting actor of Bollywood has decided to be the hero of the ongoing debate, with bloodshot soliloquies on patriotism.

Then something surreal happened. I watched Kajol’s speech at the debate, and let me be honest here, it felt like watching something entirely inconceivable by any stretch of human imagination. Something so beyond your grasp that eyeballs pop out of their sockets, and the jaw drops and runs to the other room.

Kajol starts off with stating how she was hesitant but The Telegraph was insistent for her to be a part of the panel, so her mistakes and lack of sense in what she says are the faults of the organisers. She moves on to her father’s Bengali friends, their advice on dos and don’ts at the Calcutta Club, and why she should wear specs and refrain from smiling to be taken seriously. She is visibly nervous, but she hopes to impress.

We also learn that the last debate she attended was way back in school. Considering she is not a passionate speaker who can speak off the top of her head like the rest of them present there, all her points had been written down on a paper.

“I’ll leave the politics and speak about intolerance elsewhere… meaning myself!” Till now, I am a little amused, but eager to know what her points are.

I have always been an intolerant girl. Twenty years ago, I was pictured as a demure and docile Indian girl being brought up in London by a caring and strict father who allowed me to go on my first Europe trip with friends. And there I met this boy who — quite famously — held my outstretched hand and pulled me into a train’s compartment. But once on the train, he and I were so totally on the wrong track. After all, how could any good <i>Bharatiya nari</i> ever tolerate someone as frisky and flirtatious as this boy called Raj, with overgrown hair and undergrown manners. The boy I was seriously intolerant of back in 1995, was Shah Rukh Khan. It was only later that I as Simran managed to not just tolerate him but also fall madly in love with because, after all, the <i>Dilwala</i> had to take the<i> dulhania</i> away!

Kajol, Actress

Yes, stop guffawing. From her DDLJ tale, she moves on to describe her stint in her films, Fanna and Pyaar Toh Hona Hi Tha, as a part of her discourse. Like many present at the event, you must be thinking by now, what is she smoking?

Hindi cinema is not known for having a political spine, and our stars run miles away from taking a political stand. We, too, have accustomed ourselves seeing them in an insular world, never daring to compare them with their Hollywood compatriots. We don’t expect our celebrities to talk about global warming in their speeches while receiving a film award, or taking a stand on racism/casteism/fundamentalism or any other form of social evil that our country is grappling with.

But here, an old adage has been proven right again, that Bollywood actors don’t really have much understanding of the world beyond their cushioned artifice.

It is an indisputable and unfortunate fact that cricketers and film stars are the icons that most of our youth look up to. These are the role models they hanker after, making them entities that stand above mere mortals. Kajol, being a major star, has a huge fan following and on a podium like this, I wonder what is she offering to the people that obsess over her to such an extent?

On a platform like this, of which she has chosen to be a part of, the least she could have done was explore the idea of reason and debate. I understand, she adds the glam quotient to a self-serious event which every media house nowadays vies for. Since her father’s friends have been consulted, and the points are rattled off her notes, perhaps a little homework could have helped in making the notes, so that at least there was an attempt to caress the issue, if not address it, instead of talking about something totally random in a narcissistic vein.

From the introduction, a wholly grown up woman reduced herself to a giggling school girl. With the self-apology feather in her cap and what followed, Kajol regrettably stands exposed, forever.

The video has garnered wide-eyed reactions from anyone and everyone on social media. Will she be able to run away from that? Is this speech not going to haunt her?

Vanity is alright, but it’s not fair when it infects public speeches that exist at a place, far from rationality, and at a vast distance from reason.

If we make such stars our role models, perhaps we, too, deserve them. Because on the rarest of the rare occasions when a star decides to speak out, we attack them like clones on steroids. And the rest remind us time and time again how they exist nowhere outside the orbit of their stardom.

PS: I am in the other room. The jaw seems to be missing.

(The writer is a journalist and a screenwriter who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. Follow him on Twitter: @RanjibMazumder)