Sillybrity Season

Granted it was a good wink. We are talking about the very young Priya Varrier's act in the trailer of the Malayalam film, Oru Adaar Love. In the scene that has been playing in a loop nationally, Priya is seen as a schoolgirl, training talkative, kohled eyes at Roshan Rahoof, who plays a strapping schoolboy. A demure eyelock - a shylock if you will - is consummated with a wink.

A fatwa

Granted it was a good wink but did it merit what followed? The memes were far-fetched, as memes are, but tolerable. The TV interviews, too many, bordering on the ridiculous, as such interviews are, but still okay. But FIRs? And communal twists and turns? And fatwas? Priya, of course, had to turn to the Supreme Court, before all and everyone fell in line.

A bounty

You would have heard of silly season, but this feels like an unabated silly era. Except that silly doesn't stop at being just that. It has a tendency to turn downright bilious quite fast. And silly looks for celebrity. See what happened with Padmavat and the dreamt-up dream sequence of Alaudin Khilji and Padmavati? Actor Deepika Padukone found herself faced with threats of death and mutiliation of her person. BJP MP Suraj Amu announced a bounty of Rs 10 crore on Padukone's head.

A death by drowning

And you know you are living in perilous times when people will willingly make an issue of RaGa's jacket, while more important people will be nirav about a Rs 11,000-crore scam. Silly bilious, silly scurrilous, supercilious. But going by reactions to Sridevi's death, things have hit rock bottom. Such unbridled raw curiosity trained on someone's personal tragedy. Being mined and allowing to be mined. The thing to ask - do we really want to be this people?