Superficial gloss & idle goss, the farcical lives of Bollywood wives

Having waded wonder-eyed and open-mouthed through the first season of Netflix’s flimsy  frivolous and frankly farcical Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives , I wondered what brought on the second wave. Could it be a paid venture, where these rich ‘Bollywives’ pool in their funds to make another season happen?

I am afraid that is the only explanation I could think of, for this abominable show of tawdry  affluence and gaudy hedonism.

I sat through as much of this trashy, self-pleasuring carnival of ersatz  aesthetics as I could, and then when my constitution couldn’t take any more, I gave up. What I saw was enough to  prove the stereotypical image of star wives as rich, bored, spoilt, bratty babes with nothing more worrisome than what to wear for the next party, to be all true. One of them, a genuine star wife, unlike these phoney ones (unless you consider Chunky Panday , Sanjay Kapoor, Samir Soni and Sohail Khan to be stars) once told me, “As long as I get my diamonds and  foreign vacations, he can do what he likes.”

Maheep Sandhu tells us she caught her husband cheating. He grins all through her periodical tirades as if he knows something we don’t.

If this is how Bollywood wives behave, shame on them. Of course, we have to give them the benefit of the ‘pout’: the shallow shindigs and frivolous antics could be just for the camera. For all we know, Maheep Kapoor , Seema Sajdeh , Bhavana Pandey and Neelam Kothari could be serious wives and committed mothers in real life. None of this comes across in the  presentation which revels in superficial gloss and idle goss.

Brand names are dropped. When Bollywood’s resident gynecologist speaks to the quartet of  Bollywives about a ‘designer vagina’, Seema Sajdeh (nee Khan) picks up her branded bag (sorry, I couldn’t identify the brand, will ask my friend Karan Johar about it) and squeals, “This is the only designer possession I want.”

Designer vaginas bring us to an endorsement for a menopausal product that Maheep Kapoor brings to her ‘girl tribe.’ Neelam and Bhavna admit they can’t bring themselves to say the ‘V’ words.

How about the ‘D’ word? Seema Sajdeh is divorced (so how does she even qualify as a Bollywood wife?). The only non-frivolous interlude in this airy excursion into idol gabathon has Seema discussing with her son the possibility of removing the ‘Khan’ surname from her name.

Elsewhere, divorce is a joke for Maheep Kapoor’s husband Sanjay. When she brings it up (as a joke), he laughs, “Divorce is for the rich. The poor can’t afford it.”

He is right. Have you heard of your cook or house help getting a divorce? Had we ever heard  of  “designer vaginas” before this season of _Fabulous Live_s? The pitch and preoccupation of these women is so cut off from reality, it feels like a bubble bath of customized emotions rendered in ‘see’ minor.

“What are  you? Nine years old?” Sameer Soni guffaws when his wife Neelam talks of one of her girlfriends ‘dumping’ her.

I really don’t see Season 3 of this flight into frivolity happening. Unless Netflix gets real star wives, Twinkle Khanna (Mrs Akshay Kumar), Gauri Khan (Mrs SRK), Mira Kapoor (Mrs Shahid Kapoor) and Natasha Dhawan (Mrs Varun Dhawan) together. Gauri Khan does make a fleeting  appearance  on the show with her faithful friend Karan Johar. For a brief while, the show gets an aura that is so tragically missing all through.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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