Dear Tony Leung, please don't think all Indian women are like that DD anchor

So this is what is supposed to happen when Tony Leung, who has successfully reduced women all over the world to a quivering mass of hormones, comes to India for the first time. He walks down an Indian street, turns — showing off the beautiful lines of his profile — bumps into me, is dazzled by my scintillating personality and sweeps me into his arms. Fade to black. What isn’t supposed to happen is this:

Lots of people are making fun of the young woman who, with all the wisdom in her bouffant-laden head, asked Leung, “Do you like watching movies?”

Move over Chand Nawab from Karachi, this DD Anchor at IFFI, Goa is here to win the interwebs. http://t.co/OZedIF44yO #BestThingEver

— Raheel Khursheed (@Raheelk) November 27, 2014

While this woman is clearly not the brightest spark, my problem isn’t her choice of question. Frankly, if Leung appeared in front of me, in a tux, and looked deep into my eyes, I’d probably end up saying something like “Gong xi fa cai” (that’s “happy new year” in Mandarin) or “Voulez vous couchez avec moi?” (which is an ABBA song and while it may wax eloquent about my hormonal intentions, it is perhaps not the best opening question during a red-carpet interview). [caption id=“attachment_1825063” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Tony Leung. Reuters[/caption] The reason why this lady has shocked and appalled me is that she isn’t ogling at Leung. Leung is 52. Let me repeat this for maximum effect. He is 52. In 20 years, since he caught the world’s attention in Chungking Express, his hotness has not slid a notch. In 20 years. Just for that the man deserves to be ogled at, but Our Lady of Perplexing Questions was entirely unmoved by the fact that the actor was within clutching distance. Her gaze doesn’t even follow him when he walks away. This complete lack of excitement in the Doordarshan anchor along with the question she posed to Leung makes it evident that this woman has never heard of the man. Evidently, she did nothing by way of research before showing up to do the red carpet show at the International Film Festival of India in Goa. By research I don’t mean looking up Leung’s films. I’m not saying she should have watched Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, Infernal Affairs, 2046, Hero and Lust, Caution. She doesn’t need to know he’s been part of international film juries and received countless awards for his acting. I’m just saying she should have noticed that in the swarm of moustachioed and pot bellied men in the IFFI guest list, there was just one face that gleamed with elegant sex appeal: Leung’s. Which brings me to the conclusion that Bollywood has destroyed the average Indian women’s aesthetics. Remember those famous scenes from The Clockwork Orange, in which Alex’s eyes are forced open and he’s bombarded with violent images to make him averse to violence? Bollywood has done something similar to us. We’ve had unnaturally buff men thrown at us relentlessly so that we become immune to men who don’t look like blow-up dolls. We’ve had to sit in theatres and see torsos that look like they’ve been inflated with a bicycle pump, magnified to fill the expanse of a cinema screen. There has been no respite and now, here’s the fallout. A woman stands next to Tony Leung and is unmoved. Is it a coincidence that of late there’s been a drop in population growth in the last decade in Mumbai, the Indian Mecca of Muscle and Movies? I think not. If all you see fetishised in the media around you are the buff, Bollywood bods, then of course sexual activity will descend to catatonic levels. The men, pumped with the steroids necessary to get that puffed-up look, will have (ahem) plumbing issues, thanks to the chemicals in their blood stream. The women have been brainwashed into thinking that Bollywood male stereotype is sexy, thereby losing the ability to spot and respond to the genuinely sexy. Case in point: Ms Doordarshan, who did not attempt to rip the tuxedo off Tony Leung when he walked up to her. It does, however, say something about where we’re at culturally that her molesting Leung would probably have been less embarrassing than her asking him if he likes watching movies. The unpalatable truth is that this dolt woman has gone and ruined it for all of us Indian women by making an exhibition of not just her foolishness but also her appalling lack of taste. Now Tony Leung is going to think we’re all like her — unaffected by his loveliness, unaware of his life’s work and uncaring of how well wears that tuxedo. Oh the shame…! I’m going to go and watch Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love back to back to soothe the burning agony that Miss Doordarshan has caused in me. I’d advise the young woman in question to do the same.