Rakhi Sawant. The name is enough to grab eyeballs, and you start thinking, “Oh my God! What has she done now?”
We, at The Quint, decipher five reasons why we love to hate her, and she continues to thrive in her career.
Delves Into Endless Career Choices
Most Indians resort to one career option, and carry on with it for the rest of their lives, because it has its perks. But La Sawant has jumped from one vocation to another, ranging from item numbers, acting in tidbit roles, singing, hosting reality shows and participating in them, and so on. The last shocker was launching her own political party, the Rashtriya Aam Party to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Isn’t that something to envy?
Politically Incorrect At Its Best
Indian celebrities more or less remain politically correct on public platforms, but Rakhi is at the other extreme of the spectrum. She has made a career out of giving politically incorrect statements, and she can talk about anything under the sun, with complete authority, the last one on being close friends with Indrani Mukerjea. She hardly minces her words when it comes to talking about going under the knife, which makes most women in the glamour industry coil up in fear. The brazen incorrectness that we secretly strive for, Rakhi has had it for as long as we can remember.
Always In the News
How much ever we try, we can never ignore her. Be it the kissing fiasco, or holding a swayamvar on TV, or the loud, louder, loudest claims on anything to fill up our news channels. Rakhi is always up to something. She is always alive in public consciousness with her inventive ways of being in the news.
Sartorial Wonder
Sonam Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut make headlines thanks to their status as fashionistas, and their outings are always a clickbait for the internet loving junta. Rakhi, on the other hand, has embraced the sacred and the profane in her fashion bone, and mostly leaves us gobsmacked. Clothes we would a think million times before buying, Rakhi wears them with confidence in public. Our secret kink is her open flourish.
A Success Story
We admire the beauty queens, big stars, and great actors. They are the people we dream of becoming, and being adored and admired. Rakhi is hardly admired by the Indian audiences, but there is no denying that she is a star. Our middle class aspirations coated in morality have been busted in Rakhi’s rise to stardom, and in smaller towns of India, she is better known than critically acclaimed darlings like Irrfan Khan.
We might not like her ways, but secretly, we all want to be a known as a celebrity, quite like her.
(This story is from The Quint’s archives and was first published on 25 November, 2015. It is now being republished to mark Rakhi Sawant’s birthday.)
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