Katrina Kaif and I were getting along really well. She was locked down without a maid. I was locked down without a maid. She did her vessels without a drop of sweat and made it look quite glamorous. Ditto.
Okay, I might have stretched that a tad bit – I clogged the sink, cussed a lot and perspired profusely. But it was more or less the same. We were getting into a routine – Kat and I. We did our chores and in the evening we worked out together. But alas.
You know what they say about all good things? Farah Khan ends them. In a video posted pretty soon into the lockdown, the filmmaker said celebrities posting home workouts really ought to care about more serious things during a pandemic than their ‘figures’. The video went viral as couch potatoes with a conscience exercised their fingers frantically and shared it on assorted WhatsApp groups. Khan had her heart in the right place, but it also meant I lost my life coach.
That was the end of Kat and I. She stopped sharing her fitness routine with me – and we drifted apart. She was chopping cabbage the other day to get me back but I think we are sort of over. (Also, I hate cabbage).
Of course, all of this happened a month back – so why I am talking about it now? Early this week, a video by Australian comedian Greta Lee Jackson went viral. In the video, Jackson mocked celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Amanda Keller for posting token inspirational messages from their palatial homes and thanked them from the bottom of her non-famous, broke posterior for rubbing our noses in their privilege.
The virality of the video clearly proved that like Jackson, a lot of people felt celebrities had no business being what they are. Which is have more fame, access and clout than what you can dream of. But you know that already – as you exchange quarantine recipes, post your culinary adventures on Instagram, order online groceries, feel righteous about social distancing even as your house help lines up outside a common public toilet in a coronavirus hotspot. It is an inequitable world – and pandemics are brutal levellers but not always with the same degree of equality.
However, just because you are a part of Facebook recipe group that comes up with recipes 24/7 doesn’t reduce your empathy for a migrant longing to go home. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Let celebrities and non-celebrities post and share whatever they want as they cope with an unprecedented shutdown of everything that was normal. The alternative is relentless gloom and negativity – people need to hold onto a semblance of normalcy. If it means laughing over the same old tired liquor shortage jokes on a WhatsApp group, coming up with a brilliant Abba parody music video like the four housewives in Christchurch (Check it out – it is called Quarantino), or working out with Katrina – just do what it takes to cope and to feel in control.
Celebrities who post updates about cooking or working out or their kids are also coping and also doing what they need to do to stay relevant – engage with their fans in whichever way they can. It can be comforting – for them and for their followers. It is an illusion of what used to be – but for now, it will do.
And if a celebrity workout gets you worked up, do exercise the mute and block option. That, unlike an actual workout, is actually zero effort. There is no need to read privilege and entitlement in everything – or go ahead and do it. This is a good time to be socially distanced from prigs and I will exercise that prerogative gladly.
Prigs, by the way, is just an old school way of saying ‘woke’. Wokeness stems from an insufferable notion of one’s perennial rightness. You are burdened with your privilege and feel dutybound to keep pointing it out in everything and everyone. You are a bundle of wokeaboutery – rushing into situations to feel slighted on behalf of others. You don’t feel slighted for yourself – that is too micro and not social media worthy enough.
It is always about finding a cause larger than yourself and telling people what they should be feeling and how they should be feeling. Case in point – the tweetstorm over Rishi Kapoor’s demise. The presumption that you know best is emblematic of the woke warrior and the concern troll. It is a problematic presumption. They might find a vaccine yet for COVID-19, but not for wokeness. Unfortunately.
We don’t know how long this pandemic will last. We don’t know what will make others feel good about themselves. But we do know what will make us feel good – and we should go ahead and do it.
Be silly, be happy, be funny, be stupid, be woke also if needed - be without foisting it on others –do what it takes to make you cope. That is all I wish for from the bottom of my non-famous, broke posterior.
(Naomi Datta tweets at nowme_datta, averages a lame joke a day as her Corona coping mechanism, would have posted her yoga videos but they inspire no confidence. She is also the author of ‘How To Be A Likeable Bigot’)
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