Nepotism Always Wins - Bollywood Edition

I woke this morning to read veteran actor Shabana Azmi’s claim “There’s nothing wrong with nepotism.” It’s a leitmotif I have heard a trillion times from the members of the film fraternity, and particularly those whose own children have made a killing from the birth lottery. To put things in perspective, Azmi’s rationale was - [verbatim] “If you’re a doctor, don’t you give that platform to your son? If you’re a painter, a poet or anything, it becomes natural that the atmosphere in which they’re born, that’s what they’re most inclined to get.”

Sub-consciously, hardly any Indian will find fault with Azmi’s woefully flawed hypothesis. This unanimous acceptance without a shred of doubt is spectacularly offensive to a pseudo-intellectual & bona-fide fucktard like me. I will begin with the most obvious flaw with Azmi’s tunnel vision, which she has unconsciously developed from living in reverence & privilege for decades.

India’s first PM was Nehru. His daughter Indira took over, then her son Rajiv. Since Rajiv’s assassination, India is waiting for Rahul Baba to grow up to continue the family tradition of becoming the Biggest Democracy’s Family Prime Minister. Had I come out of Sonia, I, the almost sociopath, could’ve have been the PM of India right fucking now.

Yet, Azmi with all her seasoned wisdom, pronounces nothing is wrong with nepotism.

There are three fundamental reasons why most Indians aren’t losing their minds over Azmi’s unbecoming assertion like they did when - Mr. Koi Kehta hai Bhagwan, Koi Kehta Hai Guru, Par Hum toh hai rapist Insan - got convicted & sentenced to 20 years for raping his sadhvis.

1. We 1.5 billion are naturally nepotistic

2. We trust a 66-year-old veteran who’s known both for her acting prowess & grey matter.

3. It makes sense.

I will put Azmi’s statement through the litmus test. “If you’re a doctor, don’t you give that platform to your son?” This holds true because the profession of a doctor is both lucrative & prestigious and the best option under the circumstances. Had the profession of the father been a security guard or toilet cleaner, this logic will fall flat on its face & smash its jaw.

David Dhawan is a successful bollywood film director. Logically it makes sense that his son will be attracted towards the film industry as he’s born & raised in that milieu. Nope. Varun Dhawan isn’t smitten with the film industry because he was born in the film family, he’s pulled towards it because who, in their right mind, wouldn’t want to be a film star in India where aam admi catapults anyone they see on a billboard to god status.

Had David Dhawan been a successful barber in Karol Bagh, do you think Varun would’ve been losing his balls to become a barber because he was raised in such a milieu.

Let’s test Azmi’s logic against a neutral & wide-spread profession - not lucrative - not rock bottom: Farming. 

Farmer’s offspring traditionally grew up to become farmers because that was the most obvious and achievable option as they had the in-house expertise to pass on & they truly didn’t have many other options in rural towns of India. But it all changed when farming started placing people in bottomless hardships. Now, when India’s farmers are pandemically committing suicides, they’re doing everything to get their sons educated in fields such as engineering, doctorates, et al. Governments, over the decades, have created quotas to enable this transition, but those quotas are swallowed by the already well off people who are still holding on & cashing in on their quotas & ensuring the poor keep cleaning their toilets. Some of these people are on my minuscule facebook friend list & ‘you’ could be one of them. Frankly, if I had a quota, I’d most definitely have exercised it - how else is one supposed to get admitted into a real college without selling property. So, I ain’t less pathetic than you are. We are legal scumbag siblings. We are the Robert Vadras [Priyanka Gandhi’s bae] of the society. He buys land at dirt prices & makes profit running into 100s of crores within 3 years and we, the humble thieves, steal someone’s dreams so we can get married in a lavish wedding where the cleaners are the boys whose dreams we stole without even giving a fake fuck. And then 1 or 4 years later we give birth to sons & daughters who continue the nepotism & keep the poor cleaning our toilets & eating our leftovers.

So, no, the platform that the fathers give to their sons hasn’t got squat to do with their professions but is driven by what’s most achievable & moneymaking. Suppression of the poor is the icing on the cake.

Let’s decipher the next level of the sins that nepotism gives birth to out of wedlock.

Unlike a tea shop owner’s son who starts to assist his father day-in day-out with shop work from an early age, a movie star’s son, at age 5, doesn’t help his father with his work. Because unlike the tea shop owner’s son, a movie star’s son goes to a private school in a luxury vehicle, studies in air-conditioned rooms wearing branded clothes made by the sons of the tea shop workers’ other 7-year-old sons & daughters in a sweatshop for 50 rupees for a 14-hour shift.

Now that I’ve made you smell baby-blood on your Gap t-shirt, let’s teleport back to the bone of contention - Nepotism beds Bollywood.

There are millions of people who aspire to break through the monstrous walls of the entertainment industry & become actors & eventually ‘stars’. Most of them are outright delusional. I happen to know some of them - they are beautiful idiots. But about 10% of them are the real deal - that’s about 100,000 deserving people with about 100 slots to fight for each year. Those are staggering odds 1:1000. A daunting task; that’s why the film - 300 - was made - to inspire the dreamers. Unfortunately, 1:1000 is an optical illusion - real odds are 1:100,000. Alas, a movie hasn’t yet been made to inspire when the odds are that fucked up. 

Someone politely asked me: “Hey, Fucktard - how did the odds shift from scary-as-fuck to shoot-me-dead-&-keep-shooting-me-so-I’m-never-born-without-privilege.”

As the naive acting aspirants, inspired by Gerard Butler’s insanely heroic - 300, were coming to terms with 1:1000 odds, their path was cockblocked by the children of the ‘privileged fucks’ who have direct or indirect connections with the film industry. And they come marching with pockets full of moolah - To prepare for the acting profession, they go to the film schools in New York/California. Learn dance at the fancy institutes {Shiamak Davar/Juilliard} & build body with personal trainers while gulping protein powder like it was a 25-year-old scotch.

When they’re ready - age 17-21 [girls] & 21-27 [boys], someone is ready to ‘launch’ them.

Even the deserving stars kids - Alia, Hrithik, Ranbir, Farhan wouldn’t ever [ever, ever, ever] have got the first break had their last names not been Bhatt, Roshan, Kapoor, Akhtar. No matter how much talent you have, no one from the industry will give you a launchpad. An outsider’s chances of potentially ‘making it’ in the industry are similar to Kejriwal making out with Modi in a Karan Johar magnum opus. And I’m putting my tiny stash of cash on Modi-Kejri make-out opus.

Nepotism is an avatar of the quota system, not for the down-trodden, but for the privileged & entitled. It ensures the people whose parents are toilet cleaners remain that till the world is burned down by World War 3.

Proclaiming there’s nothing wrong with nepotism is tantamount to saying there’s nothing wrong with marital rape. Everyone does it & our constitution makes it famously legal. But, so was triple talaq until a fortnight ago - we crossed that bridge. 

Nepotism isn’t going anywhere because we love anyone who comes out of our womb. But, let’s not normalize it & call out people who do like I called out Azmi, her legendary status notwithstanding.