Worship

 

Whenever we relate in our opinion to someone else who is better than we are or say higher than us in our esteem, we tend to conceptualize him or her as hero. I suppose, this has been for ages. It dates back to people worshipping in the form of God, then King/Emperor of a nation and now in modern times following a certain movie star or a political leader.

Oxford Dictionary explains hero worship as: excessive admiration for someone.

Since, entertainment in form of movies is so much of our lives; we look at movie star as a real time hero who plays as a warrior embodied with wisdom, strength, and courage in the face of evil. Hero, in Indian movies largely has the carefully-nurtured defender-of-the-downtrodden image, which in a way promotes the term hero-worship.

I, myself am a big fan of Mr. Kamalassan of Tamil Cinema. Whilst, I was with Grand Hyatt Mumbai before joining Ma Foi, I had a chance to meet up the favorite actor of mine in full flesh. While there is a long and interesting story of how I ended up meeting him, Mr. Kamalassan as such is a very humble person and easy to talk to. He readily agreed to stand besides me for a photograph. When, I enquired about his fan followings back home and how he feels about the same. He smiled and said though it makes him nervous sometimes; still it proves as an impetus to work more perfectly as there is a larger expectation involved. In Tamilnadu, have heard rumours about shrines for MGRamachandran and Khusboo at Chennai and Trichy respectively. Which, needless to add, in case had been erected, by now must have been promptly forgotten and left to ruin. Still, what prompted the fans for such an idea? And would this hero worship ever lead me to keep a photo of Mr. Kamalassan in my pooja room?

In the urban Tamilnadu, you can find fan clubs of popular actors in every street. How can I forget Mr. Rajnikant, whose delirious fans, hang on to every syllable he utters with something akin to a religious fervor. Once, in Trichy, when I was going towards my exam centre, I found to my amazement myself in a traffic jam. Though I didn’t had much time, I tried to sneak out side the Autorickshaw to find a fairly large crowd amidst a cinema house. People with flowers, coconuts, garlands and incence sticks had gathered in front of big cut-out of the hero of the newly released film. The atmosphere there was nothing less than auspicious. I asked the Auto driver to take a short-cut to reach the exam centre. Which, he did and when I was paying up the money, he repented that if we had stayed there for some more time, we could have got some ‘prasad’ too.

In Mumbai, not too long, there was an advt for sale of flats in a building near Amitabh Bachchan’s bungalow. The price was bit costly than the normal rates in JVPD scheme - Juhu, bearing to the fact that it was near to Big B’s place and one can boast to their friends and relatives that they live besides the king of Indian cinema. And all of the flats got booked in a day’s time.

Recently in Dubai, a new state-of-the-art complex of the Belhasa Driving Center,(one of the premier driving institutes in the UAE) was inaugurated by Bollywood actor Salman Khan, recently booked for crash driving. I suppose, you can see the irony in the function held and the level of hero worship.