A full-page ad announced their arrival. Punctuality, never a virtue, but a fashionable vice, won’t help, and so, dot on time, we marched in. The lady organiser, standing lamely by the vacant room, looked at us with a snide smile. And muttered: “You are early.”
“No, on time,” we argued.
“Well, the stars are late; they will come only after 45 minutes. Flight delayed, you see…”
We saw it too clearly. Another set of stars. Another group of perennial late-runners. And another hour of sheer misery for us…
Over the 45 minutes promised by the lady, it took another 45 minutes before the stars trooped in, and as if challenging us all for their delay, their flight’s trouble, daring us to question them, they rattled out empty apologies.
Further afield, the star of stars is to make his appearance. Dumping the lesser stars, we rush. This turf is star-stuff. The venue is packed. To find your way in, to hopefully obtain access to the star, nothing works but attitude. We throw it around to quarrel with the organiser who doesn’t believe that all media are equal; some are more equal if you happen to own the venue.
Little ones clutch autograph books; cameras do trial shots; mobile phone cameras pan on the crowd from innumerable hands. Children have clambered on top of their parents’ shoulders; mothers have started complaining about how heavy the kids are; smoke fills the room and there is no sign of the star.
A security man doesn’t find the crowd amusing and makes sure whoever catches his eyes also takes a piece of his mind. That is not something you would want to take home, not on a working day. You look aside.
You look aside and you see men patiently waiting. Two hours have slipped by, there is the inevitable fidgeting, yet, they wait.
But why? Why do we wait on the stars? Why are the stars late every time they have to make an appearance? Forget the stars of stars, forgive them, for aren’t they big, too big for the audiences who made them? But what of the smaller ones, the starlets? What makes them too regard as normal to let others wait, not the 15-minute traffic hassle, but hours on?
A man, who has expertise drawing out shooting schedules of the Indian Hindi film industry biggies, has an answer: “They don’t respect the masses.”
Stars mouth about how fans humble them with adulation and yet, they somehow seem to give no value to their time. And we, the masses, get pushed and shoved, shouldered and bruised, stamped on and kicked around, mocked at and jeered, to wait upon a man, men and women, who simply don’t care.
Perhaps, they are taking it out on you, for all the time they waited on producers, directors and financiers. Pay, all you dumb masses, pay for my success. Pay for my triumph with your time.
Stars, for sure, don’t teach you self-respect. They take away a little of yours.
