Playboy comes to India.....!

Blogdosts, since you asked for more wisecracks... here's one from an opportunist!

The other two images are from Lisbon - the spectacular Fort and the picturesque Castle. Well done TiE for finding such awesome venues for your Retreat. I didn't at all mind singing for my supper. I was in excellent company - Lord Karan ( Cobra) Billimoria, and the jolly old Farouk Engineer.

Last afternoon was productively spent at my old haunt - St.Xavier's College. at a meeting of the Advisory Board, of which I am a member - very proud of it , too. We need to raise a 100 crores. And quickly. Any bright ideas? This is as a Corpus Fund from which to pay for more teachers, and upgrade facilities asap. Considering Yale has a Corpus Fund exceeding 200 billion USD ( or so I was informed!), what is a piddly 100 crores for quality education at a college that has produced over 50 Padma Winners - 5 in this year itself! That is quite a feat!

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This appeared in The Week.... Sherlyn turned up demurely in a tacky saree for her press conference.... and I thought to myself --- Gurrrrllll, what were you thinking??????

She dares.... who bares...

Relax! She’s done it. We’ve seen everything. And nobody has died of shock. The hot news about a certain starlet appearing on the cover of ‘Playboy’ caused a minor flutter across assorted platforms in India.But that was it. After the initial and obligatory murmurs of protest – the usual nonsense about ‘How could a Bharatiya Nari do such a thing and bring disgrace to India?”’- people promptly and sensibly switched their attention to someone else, something else. Meanwhile, Sheryln Chopra, the starlet who bared it all, slipped back into Mumbai quietly, and fully clothed, much to the disappointment of waiting shutterbugs.There was no rioting on the streets, and nobody hurled abuses or tomatoes on Sherlyn. This is today’s woman, exercising an option and grabbing an opportunity. She stripped because she wanted to, not because someone was holding a gun to her head. Perhaps, Sherlyn also hoped to make some sort of dodgy history by being the first desi girl to bare it all for what was once the world’s premiere pin- up publication.But let’s get a little perspective here. ‘Playboy’, like Hugh Hefner, its geriatric founder, is a dying brand. Nobody pays good money any more to ogle naked ladies in lavish centrespreads, no matter how buxom. Why should they when one can feast ones eyes on still more sizzling images for free on the internet! If Sherlyn has been singled out for this dubious ‘honour’,chances are ‘Playboy’ is trying its level best to crack the potentially huge and very lucrative Indian market.

But what the marketing whiz kids at ‘Playboy’ probably don’t know is that the Indian reader has come a long way. And we have had our own versions of ‘Playboy’floating around for decades. Even those didn’t take off! Even if some of the centre spreads, who took it all off for them, did. Indian men obviously didn’t get their jollies from staring at air-brushed images of busty blondes with ceramic teeth and fixed up faces back then. It’s doubtful whether that tired old formula will work now. This is an era in which an ‘ófficial’ porn star like Sunny Leone has gone mainstream without anybody suffering a cardiac arrest. Open any movie magazine and you will see eye candy like you won’t believe! Starlets stripping for ‘çauses’ – from cricket to cancer on their websites, fail to get anyone drooling. Whether it’s a Poonam Pandey or some other hungry for publicity Bollywood aspirant, Indian viewers have pretty much seen it all.... and yawned. So which rabbit is Mr. Hefner going to pull out of his hat... rather, toupee? If that Bunny is called Sheryln, I don’t see too many takers.

More than forty years ago, Katy Mirza, a petite Parsi girl from Mumbai with a truly impressive chest, packed her bags and left to join the Playboy Club in London. People were mildly interested... yes. But it wasn’t as if Katy made front page news. Her decision was seen in the right context – as a smart and lucrative career move. Perhaps,it is just that for Sheryln as well. Once we tire of Sherlyn’s birthday suit pictures , there will be several other Indian girls who will happily bare all for Hugh and his crew. Big deal.All one can hope is that these women have the good sense to hire sharp agents and make a decent living out of removing their clothes for the cameras. Presumably, there are enough voyeurs still left in the world ( or in India), who will be mad enough to pick up a copy of a magazine that is still attempting to cash in on the old tits-and-ass formula. Really Hugh! It is so depressingly last century!

As for our girl Sheryln, this is her time to milk the story for all its worth – someone should tell her she’s in great company. Perhaps Sherlyn can check with her granny? Maybe even Grans is much younger than good old Hugh , who still hangs on to the title of “The Dirtiest Old Man on Earth”. The real fun will begin if Sherlyn becomes Hugh’s latest fiancée and moves into the Playboy Mansion to join his harem. But I seriously doubt if even that stunt will sell more copies of ‘Playboy’ in India. Our idea of dirty pictures is different... aha.... now, if Hugh were to give the luscious Vidya a call.... India would definitely sing a different tune that goes Óoh-la-la.... Ooh-la-la....