Award optimisations

I didn't know until the rolling headlines on news channels told me that there had been one more "Bollywood Awards Nite" where the same people got the same awards. Ever since other film magazines and organisations realised that it didn't take much to print posters, create statuettes in semi-objectionable postures and call themselves the only credible prizes in the land, Filmfare's monopoly on the matter was challenged. So now we can't tell apart any of them. So in the interest of screen time and money, I propose a single award show. You get the filmi types together and go: right, Rani: you get the Screen, IIFA and Filmfare for Best Actress. But you don't get the Cineblitz one, it goes to Preity Zinta. Shah Rukh: you get all awards for any one of your movies, and we promise that any unannounced ones for this year will go to you retrospectively.

Of course, the other problem with our awards system is that of socialistic political correctness, which is essentially the issue of making sure every star gets an award each year so that they continue giving interviews in the future. What must be happening is this: the organisers have a list of stars and the names get checked one by one. When you know however you try swinging it that Kareena Kapoor isn't going to win any (for having played a streetwalker badly), you give her a special award for having played a streetwalker "differently". It doesn't matter what the award is called, that's what creativity is all about. Of course, you have to make sure someone from the each of the five families gets an award. The families are the Kapoors, the Bachchans, the its-all-about-loving-your-Johars-and-Chopras and the Limited Supermodels Society of India. The fifth one, keeping in with democracy, is an open slot - sometimes it is the Roshans, sometimes the Khan-Shetty-Dutt-Kumar combine.