The Show Must Go On

The biggest hit this season seems to be a 62-hour spectacle that was scripted from across the border. None of the actors were known faces until now and its overnight success has send shivers down the spine of many in Bollywood.
The 26/11 Mumbai attack, while an unprecedented and grotesque one, has threatened the country’s biggest movie industry and rightly so because in a holiday season when every teenager should be humming OSTs and copying movie styles, they are trying to gather themselves after 26/11.
TRPs are the highest for news channels while entertainment and sports are forgotten. For an industry that has had a lean year, missing this season is unimaginable. Also sensing this, many in tinsel town reacted openly in a manner that has never been witnessed before. Bollywood was all over the news before the fire in the Taj Hotel was doused.
While the media in a deliberate attempt refrained from communalising the attack, as ‘Hindu’ or ‘Islamic’ terror, in a subtle way it projected how the attack had maligned the Muslims. For reasons best know to the news channels, most of the celebrities who appeared on TV or appealed for unity and peace were Muslims – Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Javed Jaffrey, Farah Khan … . Saif Ali Khan and his latest arm candy Kareena Kapoor dashed a letter on how they were ‘shocked’ by the attack. The exceptions in this could be Amitabh Bachchan on his blog and Sanjay Dutt. But given Sanju’s alleged 1993 blasts links one cannot miss the parallel. How come the media missed the Kapoors, Kumars, Deols…?
What took the industry so long to react while the country, particularly Mumbai, has been reeling under a series of attacks time and again?
This time terror has hit the glitterati in more than one way. The panic the attack has created has stopped people flocking to multiplexes thereby reducing the revenue movies churn.
26/11 has dawned upon them the reality that they could also be hit by terror. An average Mumbaikar does not frequent the Taj or the Trident. He has been hit many times in the past when bombs went off in crowded trains and BEST buses. Bollywood does not frequent the CST terminal, their hangouts were targeted on 26/11. The appeal filmstars have among the public cannot be underscored but one wonders what took them so many years to voice themselves in the chorus they are now?