Dear Kangana Ranaut. We’ve all been through tough break-ups. But we don’t bring it to work
If there’s one stock answer Bollywood actors have learned like the back of their hand, it is, “We are just good friends.” Slowly catching up is, “I don’t want to talk about my personal life because it takes the focus away from my work.”
Sidharth Malhotra said it when his on-again-off-again relationship with Alia Bhatt was the talk of tinsel town. Sonakshi Sinha said it. Farhan Akhtar said it when everyone kept asking him about Shraddha Kapoor — and he wasn’t ready to reveal that he was dating Shibani Dandekar.
Unfortunately, however, this always comes from actors who have little or no good work to boast of.
And the one who actually does — Kangana Ranaut — just won’t stop talking about her personal life.
In a recent interview with a leading entertainment daily, Kangana dove right back into the pits of her past, and pulled out a tattered piece of laundry and started cleaning it. She was asked to comment about the uncanny similarity netizens spotted between a dialogue in the Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi trailer and the Hrithik Roshan starrer Mohenjo Daro.
“Who has seen that film? Let's not even get there,” said Kangana, curtly.
Agreed that it was a bait. But here’s where PRs come in — something Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul forgot to hire before they landed upon the Koffee couch — ‘managing’ the image of the talent they are handling, even if that means to tell them to fall back on much-repeated stock answers like, “I don’t want to talk about my personal life because it takes the focus away from my work.”
A couple of days ago, Kangana repeated how ‘traumatic’ the last year, 2018 was for her. “I have had a really horrible time and I hope it changes this year... it was going really downhill, till a point, it couldn’t go any further down,” said Kangana apparently about the collective efforts of Rakesh Roshan and the ‘big reveal’ claim, Karan Johar and the nepotism row, and Apurva Asrani and the ‘credit’ war for Simran.
But the problem is not that Kangana chooses to speak about her personal life.
The problem is that she fails to strike a conversation about any other aspect of her personal life.
And we get it. A bitter, traumatic break-up does take a toll on you. We've all been there — and believe us — done that. For some of us, it is even a sort of defence mechanism — you know, constantly reminding ourselves what we've overcome to reach this point, lest we slip into a 'What have we done to our lives' trip.
But, eventually...
You.
Move.
On.
And it's high time Kangana did, too. Like seriously, leave that bitter break-up home. Don't bring it to work, because the universe knows we don't get to. Sometimes, we, the other brand of strong women, just have to slap on lipstick, brush-in the mascara, line our eyes with kohl and walk out that door with our chins up, because we have to. The world doesn't deserve to hear our sob story on a loop.
Heck, we don't deserve to repeat our sob stories on a loop!
How about that, Kangana?
Perhaps what Kangana needs is not a PR person, but a friend — someone who will whip up a deadly cocktail, then pour it down her throat and even hold her hair if she were to puke her heart out in the washroom. Take her out shopping and if nothing works, smack her in the face and say, “Get over it, woman!”
For heaven’s sake, she has the Maharashtra wing of the Karni Sena baying for her blood! This is not the time to cry over some ‘silly ex’ or even bring him up in conversations. It’s time to sharpen your sword, get up on that horse, and preferably do what Mohenjo Daro couldn’t — attract a massive audience.