Tough guys do dance

Bihar MLA Shyam Bahadur Singh was criticised the other day for gyrating his hips along with bar girls at a function for Dalits. Such behaviour, critics said, was unbecoming of an elected representative of the people . And so what if people keep seeing telecasts of film stars gyrating their hips along with chorus girls not just in item numbers from movies but even on stage? Some channels even show children dancing filimi style with gay abandon in reality shows.

Shyam Bahadur Singh may have even thought that gyrating one’s hips and shaking a leg was perfectly acceptable behaviour. So what if Norman Mailer wrote a book called Tough guys don’t dance! The underworld gangster played by Shah Rukh Khan in the movie Don not only danced but made others dance to his tune.

These days, Shah Rukh is, of course, not so much dancing as talking incessantly on every TV news-channel in India. It may be a reaction to the Shiv Sena’s gratuitous advice that moviegoers should stay away from his latest release My name is Khan merely because the actor had stated in his persona as the co-owner of Kolkata Knight Riders that he would have liked Pakistani cricketers to play in the third edition of the IPL.

Last Sunday saw Shah Rukh appearing in yet another exclusive interview on yet another TV news-channel and talking non-stop about how one’s best friend was silence! As a senior journalist quipped in a recent column, “He talks in torrents. There are no full-stops when he opens his mouth. Actors are narcissists. That’s a given. My useless advice to him would be: talk less, act more.” The only problem is that a silent but acting/dancing Shah Rukh can inspire the odd MLA in Bihar to emulate the Bollywood Badshah by doing the jig.