Woman of Letters: The world as a Bigg Boss house

Dear Bigg Boss,

Forgive me for interrupting whatever you are currently doing, but I am writing to ask why you have been missing in action at a time when your celebrated stentorian presence is needed most urgently, to call order in your house, as only you know how.

I am referring, of course, to the alleged suicide of a former Bigg Boss contestant, TV actress Pratyusha Banerjee, and the ensuing macabre events we have been witness to.

Is it germane to mention here that it is probably your fault entirely?

Take the reality TV star Dolly Bindra's actions, for instance. Exiting the hospital after she visited her dead colleague, Ms Bindra, who was a leading member in your home a few years ago, gave what is surely her most riveting performance in front of the waiting cameras.

With a pink dupatta casually wrapped around her head to underline that this was a mourning scene, Ms Bindra took the time to carefully describe the state of the corpse she just saw.

We were informed that Banerjee's face was disfigured, there was sindoor on her head and that while the redoubtable Ms Bindra had tried to look for the bruises of the rope that the late actress had hanged herself with, unfortunately there, the sheet around her neck had been tied.

To further elaborate on the state of affairs, Ms Bindra had helpfully accompanied her words with actions, pointing with her stubby fingers to her own neck around which at that time not a noose, but an elegant row of pearls was seen.

But this was not the only information the good woman shared even as Banerjee's body turned colder upstairs. She spoke of life, pain, relationships, Pratyusha's parents, the awfulness of it all and here's the clincher: the fact that Banerjee's boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh was definitely, certainly, unmistakably and without doubt, guilty: he had been spotted eating from a packet of chips in full view of all, as his girlfriend lay dead.

Chips and the eating of them appeared to have fixated the very astute Ms Rakhi Sawant enormously too. In her cameo appearance outside the hospital, Ms Sawant, another veteran of your hospitality, had spent a good amount of time talking about Rahul Raj Singh and his consuming of chips even as she spoke to the press. To indicate how very important this piece of evidence was to the whole case, Ms Sawant had blinked her eyelids many times to show she was moved and very very disturbed.

Perhaps, she also blinked them because given all her astonishing Botox interventions it looked like her eyelids were the only things that moved on her famous and unforgettable visage.

These two reality stars were not the only ones who obliged the TRP crazed media with their performances.

Throughout the week a slew of the late actress' friends and colleagues rolled up all day, all night to vent their feelings and show off their well-toned bodies and cool street styles, not to forget their emotive ranges to best advantage. Some channeled their inner Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire to express rage, wearing memorable singlets; some stayed with the more familiar Ekta Kapoor line of unfettered grief that is the currency of saas bahu shows; some in well-modulated voices that could easily translate to compering award shows and dance contests shared details of the actress' relationships and personal life.

And of course, in the case of the Bigg Boss phenomena – the cameras were on 24x7, no detail was too intimate to share and every thing – warts, neurosis, crimes and misdemeanours were there for viewers to watch in all their glory.

So I write to you Bigg Boss to ask why, now that the lines between reality and life have been so irrevocably erased, have you chosen to be absent from what is certainly the most riveting of the Bigg Boss episodes?

Come on BB, don't let us down: let your booming, insidious voice ring out from above and call for order.

Tick off the actresses with verbal diarrhoea, rap the self-styled sleuths – on the knuckles – who breach all known standards of decency with their revelations, threaten to evict from the TV screens those who break the rules – do something, anything!

Because as everyone knows, the trouble with our lives is not that we are all – every one of us – residing in a giant, all-encompassing fish tank of a Bigg Boss house, but that Bigg Boss himself has left the building and now there's no one to call the shots anymore.

So you have a real actress who really (allegedly) killed herself tragically on April Fool's Day and the clinching evidence so far is a bag of chips!

Come back Bigg Boss and rule your universe. The inmates are running amok; there's no going back now.

With every good wish etc.
Yours sincerely,
malavikasmumbai@gmail.com
(The columnist believes in the art of letter-writing)