The hypocrisy of Bollywood award shows: Deepika praises Kangana with elegant slyness

In an interview with Hindu__s__tan Times, Sushant Singh Rajput summed up Bollywood with a precision and candour that actors rarely exhibit. “You look in one direction, and you find mediocrity and nepotism thriving, and you can’t come up with a logical reason to explain it,” said Rajput of the Hindi film industry. “In the other direction, you see immense respect for passion, talent and professionalism, irrespective of being an insider or an outsider.” The nepotism and mediocrity that Rajput speaks is never more evident than in January, which is Bollywood’s award season. A rash of awards’ shows unleash themselves and although they’re ostensibly about giving the public a fantastic show and applauding the good work done in the industry, all that happens is that egos that are already colossal are made to puff up a little more. [caption id=“attachment_2057105” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Facebook[/caption] Modelled as they may be on events like the Oscars, there’s a critical difference between most foreign awards and ours. Celebrities attend the Oscars, BAFTAs and similar spectacles because being seen on that red carpet is a big deal and because there’s some respect for the awards in question. Here in India, celebrities attend awards shows only if they’re promised that they will win. Some will even have their managers haggle about which award is being given to them. Absolutely no one – neither actors nor directors or any other guest with a modicum of fame to their name – comes to a Bollywood awards show to either enjoy the show or cheer for the industry in which they work. Very rarely are actors surprised to win the award that they do. The standard practice is to let the actors know well ahead of time which award they’ll get and also at which point in the show the award will be announced. This is why so many arrive late - all they care about is the moment they need to go on stage, clutch the statuette and make a speech. However, since most adoring Bollywood fans watch these shows on TV, they don’t realise just how careless the actors are about these awards. It’s difficult to respect something that’s given away like a return gift at a birthday party. That said, some actors do try to keep up illusions. At the recently held 21st LifeOK Screen Awards, Deepika Padukone won the award for best actress and said in her acceptance speech, “Thank you for this award, but I believe that this year belonged to Kangana [Ranaut]. So, Kangana, this one’s for you.” It’s not unusual to mouth platitudes about fellow nominees, but this was more emphatic a statement than those usual sweet nothings. Padukone was essentially pointing out what would have been every Bollywood enthusiast’s thought when the award was announced: that Ranaut should have got it. Most of us would agree with Padukone. Ranaut ruled hearts and (temporarily) the box office with Queen and if quality and talent were the criteria for these Bollywood awards shows, she would have swept every Best Actress award. However, Ranaut has decided that she will, like Aamir Khan, boycott such events because they’re meaningless and rigged. As a result, while “celebrating” Bollywood’s best this year, every single awards show has and will ignore Khan and Ranaut who acted in two of the most talked about films of 2014. Their films were critically appreciated and box office successes. By every yardstick other than the quid pro quo that guides Bollywood awards shows, they should be getting statuettes. Instead, Shah Rukh Khan and Padukone will win (and have won) awards for their acting in Happy New Year. They’re literally being given prizes for just showing up. Ranaut’s comment to Padukone’s speech was straightforward: “I hope someday, she would tell me in person what she feels about my work. I would appreciate that a lot more.” It shows rather plainly that Padukone’s comment was a public relations exercise. This is not to suggest Padukone doesn’t admire Ranaut’s work. Like Ranaut, Padukone began as merely a pretty face and has slowly but steadily grown into a good actress. One imagines if there’s anyone who would appreciate an actress coming into her own, it would be Padukone. However, this doesn’t make her public praise of Ranaut a less calculated move. On the face of it, Padukone saying she doesn’t deserve the LifeOk Screen Award for Best Actress seems to cheer for Ranaut, but the comment also shows what a perplexing combination of manipulation and charm Bollywood is as a collective. No matter what anyone claims, it could not have come as a surprise to Padukone that she won in the category she did. The list of winners was not a secret (a fact that is proven conclusively by their names being printed in the next day’s Indian Express. The show ended just before midnight, by which time the paper would have gone to press). More importantly, Padukone could have said what she did in her speech earlier when she was offered the award in exchange for her presence at the show. Clearly, whether or not she feels she deserves the award, she has no qualms in claiming it for herself. If Padukone felt so strongly about making a public statement, she could have said that she’d attend the show and receive the award on Ranaut’s behalf since Ranaut wouldn’t be there. But no. What Padukone did end up doing, with elegant slyness, was to not only score an award, but also do a little extra publicity for her offscreen persona and (rather ungratefully) point fingers at LifeOK Screen Awards for getting it wrong. For the millions who aren’t aware of the calculations and negotiations that go on behind the screens, Padukone comes across as an honest actress who is generous enough to mention a competitor during her winning moment and ready to expose Media, everyone’s favourite villain, for robbing Ranaut. Whether Padukone is being a hypocrite or is singularly delusional, or if there’s another compelling reason guiding Padukone is something we’ll probably never know in entirety because it’s unlikely that any actor involved in the Bollywood circus will come clean about why they do what they do. All we do have are awards of dubious distinction and actors making a mockery of them.