Celebs

Here in front of me lies a newspaper supplement (we get The Asian Age that is gradually abandoning its communist hues and making overtures at the Delhi yuppy crowd) with a heading: “Celebs celebrate style, acquire snazzy phones”.

This set me thinking about the expression “celebrity”. Is it a derivative of celebration, and if yes, then are people who always celebrating called the “celebs”? How does one qualify to become a celebrity? Is Laloo a celebrity or is he plain famous? Does being a celebrity mean appearing on Page3 and in other glossy magazines or does it mean you are really successful hence you are in this never ending loop of celebration, constantly living a pyrotechnic life? Does being invited to all the happening places in the city mark you as a celebrity. It’s intriguing.

About the heading. If celebs acquire snazzy phones, this becomes a news that can hog a complete back page of the supplement. I know people can term it as wastage of precious print space. As such I have no problem with that. My only gripe is the environmental factor. If trees are being cut just so that you have enough paper to read about the snazzy acquisitions of your celebrities, this is something hard to digest. I’m not interested in knowing what phones they are using or what clothes they are wearing or what clubs they are visiting or who is touching whom or whose dress is slipping from where. You can show all that on TV. After all my nephew watches the boring sports channels all the time and it almost chokes me. If I can endure football, I can definitely watch celebs with their plastic smiles. But paper? Paper is precious, please save it for news, if at all you have to use it.