By MAHESH BHATT
Stardom is difficult to handle. When my daughter forayed into the entertainment industry, it was a completely different world. I told her that one must treat stars who have tasted dizzying success, like bomb blast victims as they are in a state of shock. You are suddenly hurled into another space. You have no idea what it is to be a star and to be drenched in so much attention. There is so much money being paid to young stars.
People like Alia, who come from star families and are a part of Mumbai, have seen it all. But young girls who come from small towns, go through intense struggles and success and then a sudden change. Amid the hustle and bustle of city life, they find themselves alone and lonely. When the present is so troubled, you escape to the world of meditation or you become an alcoholic, or you get into drugs and sex with multi-partner relationships.
The laws of entertainment world are unforgiving and merciless. They embrace success and spit out failure. While the highs are very high, the lows are very low. Not everybody can face these lows. It requires a firm mindset and family support to create a shield around you. In the entertainment business in India, a family armed with maturity and not dazzled by success can be of great help.
Depression is a reality but not every actor goes through it. Yet, it is not unique to the film industry. They are politicians who are suffering from acute depression. I think they need to be locked up as they are more dangerous. Policemen shoot themselves due to depression. Depression is gaining epidemic proportions and the spotlight is on the entertainment space.
Fierce competition makes actors vulnerable. It's like a person suffering from asthma going to ladakh for vacation. Depression and entertainment wreak havoc. My love lady Parveen Babi destroyed herself not because of the film industry but because she had schizophrenia. It wreaked havoc on her and I saw her dying.
Pratyusha Banerjee's case is, indeed, a tragedy. There was a time when I thought that economic emancipation would make our women free and liberated from punishments unleashed by intolerant spouses. But in my lifetime within the entertainment industry, I have seen innumerable successful actresses who, despite having unimaginable wealth at their disposal, being very articulate, having enlightened opinions on female emancipation and talking of women's rights and how society should conduct itself, privately put up with such atrocities which even your domestic help would not put up with. That's all confidential.
On the other hand, I have seen economically weak women who refused to put up with bullying partners. They would dare them in the open and walk away.
There are women who are well-educated and have so much money and still choose to stay in a doomed relationship. I would call it narcissistic personality disorder. It's a psychiatric phrase where you choose to be dependent on an abusive partner. Also in a busy city and social media you tend to become lonelier each day.
In this world of glitz and glamour, while there is no denying that womenfolk among them have really blazed ahead and are doing things which were perhaps inconceivable by our predecessors, there are many who still don’t reveal what they go through and continue to stay in a doomed relationship till death.