Ah! The travails of the rich and the famous.

You know Ranveer Singh, right? The one whose personality matches his fluorescent sartorial sense (well let’s just say quirky)? For those who don’t, let me tell you that he is a very successful actor. I love his movies. He just seems to fill the screen with his effervescent presence.

But did you also know that he had a very tough childhood? Apparently, he told an interviewer, in a tremulous tone while holding back his tears, that his family was so poor that they could only go for holidays to the US, with an occasional trip to Singapore and Indonesia thrown in as variety. Poor guy, no Latin America, no Northern Lights, not even Thailand. Now while I really felt for him, I also couldn’t help but think that if that is his definition of being poor, we Indians are living it up. How I wish my family was that poor. Holidays during my childhood included mainly, trips to our ‘native place’, playing with buffaloes and listening to grandma’s stories, all in amazingly exotic Rohtak.

Now I think I have dozens of problems, but being rich is (unfortunately) not one of them. Like for example, my decision on what to order at a fancy restaurant is based on what the right side has listed in numerals on the menu card.

The rich on the other hand, like our fluorescent dasher Ranveer Singh, have problems of their own – starting with for example, having to deal with sciatica because the stuffed wallet in your butt pocket makes one sit awkwardly. Now I agree that this example is a bit dated. The ‘really rich’ do not carry money on them nowadays. I remember seeing an interview of Anil Ambani a few years back wherein he was asked, maybe by Simi Grewal – “How much money do you have in your wallet right now?” His reply – “I don’t carry a wallet”.  Now THAT is rich. It is a different matter that while he didn’t have a wallet then, he has no money now.

One problem for rich people is that they have to deal with pesky reporters who love to know what they do for a living. You must have come across an interview of one gentleman named Mr Orry (Orhan Awatramani actually) a friend of the rich and famous? He is often seen in various Bollywood parties being photographed with the ‘new generation’ starlets, sporting, for want of a better word, unique mobile phones (I once spied him with a gold phone with what looked like, a peeled banana on the phone cover. No, not an image, a full 3D banana – in gold of course). When faced with this very same vexing question during an interview, he elaborated with great sincerity, “I am living. I live. I am a liver”. I am sure that that would have stumped the interviewer so much that he would have wrapped up.

But in today’s world there is something that outdoes reporters in peskiness – social media. One just cannot get away from the ever-vigilant social media trolls with such gems. Twitterati responded hilariously, but none as hilariously as Xavier Uncle who very succinctly stated, “I tweet. I’m a twitter.”

On another occasion his friend (Mr Orry’s, not Xavier Uncle’s) Ms Ananya Pandey (now if you ask me who she is, I would be as stumped as Mr Orry’s interviewer) was asked the same question about him. Her response? “Not sure what he does, he works on himself.” Deep, right? Cannot top it, right? But wait, the young lady herself topped it in another interview where her response to charges of nepotism was “It isn’t as easy as people say it is. I think everyone has their own journey. My dad has never been a part of the Dharma films. He has never been on Koffee with Karan.” Now if this marvel of a statement left you tongue tied, Siddhant Chaturvedi, also an actor, also present at the same interview, (but without any hint of silver spoons in his life) was not. His poetic response topped anything that even Xavier Uncle could think of – “jahaan humare sapne poore hote hain, wahi inka struggle shuru hota hai.” Meanwhile the aforementioned dad, Mr Chunky Pandey, has advised his daughter, fervently, to avoid mentioning him when she spouts such profound statements.

Okay Mr Orry is but a stripling of 24 years and so it is understandable that he may have misunderstood the questioner.  Let us see what a fifty plus scion/actor thought about the torrid Covid times. Nawab Saif Ali Khan saab said, “During the lockdown we quietly sat at home for six months, wasted our lives and lost our time. But now when the government is saying go out and work to support the economy, we are in the frontline again. It’s a high-risk profession, almost like working at a hospital.” Hmm. I almost started banging thalis and lighting diyas in recognition. Wonder what those thousands of doctors and nurses would think of this comparison though.

Okay, let us step away from tinsel town. The rich have this burning desire to be different, to stand out. You wash down your Old Monk with peanuts, they have caviar with champagne. You holiday at Rohtak, they in Machu Picchu. You swim in a community swimming pool, they go shark cage diving. Take Mr Datta Phuge. Well, Datta ji was a successful businessman in Pune. Having done all that the rich can do, he still, he felt, was not standing out enough. Now Indians have a great fascination for gold and apparently there are 25000 tonnes of gold in private hands in India (valued, as per Times of India at 37-40% of our GDP, viz 37-40% of 3.5 trillion dollars. I thought I would convert that into Rupees but my calculator has given up. Too many zeros).  Now, Datta ji had a good proportion of these 25000 tonnes with him. Wondering how to best put his stash to good use, he believe it or not, got himself a shirt made of three kg worth of gold worth over Rs 1.5 crore. Now if that didn’t make him stand out as the gold standard amongst the rich, nothing will. Regrettably, he was murdered for not repaying Rs 1.5 lakhs that he owed someone. May his soul rest in peace.

On a more serious note, one area that I really feel the rich and famous have it tough is wrt the law. Somehow, what is considered normal or pardonable wrt the hoi polloi becomes a police case for the moneyed. Our greatest superstar, Mr Amitabh had to face a case wherein he took 18 seconds longer than the stipulated 52 seconds to sing the national anthem! Sushmita Sen, Vidya Balan, Twinkle Khanna, Aishwarya Rai have similarly been booked for ‘causing inconvenience to women’ or the quaintly termed, ‘creating nuisance in the public’. The male of the species haven’t been spared either. Ranveer Singh, Milind Soman, Karan Johar, Sachin Tendulkar, have all had their brushes with the law over trivial issues. And I am not talking about serious offences here such as drugs or causing death by negligence or even shooting harmless black bucks.

In sum total thus, the rich indeed have their own troubles in life.