I detect a voyeuristic streak in film journalists when they free-wheel their fertile imagination on whether an actress is in the family way. The latest to get caught in this speculative web is Rani Mukherji who is believed to be sporting a baby bump before or after her marriage with film-maker Aditya Chopra.
Pregnancy or the rumors about it are an integral part of most film stories. In the seventies you often saw the father informing the daughter of her pregnancy with the clichéd "Beti, tum ek bachche ki maa banne waali ho" and the daughter would look shocked beyond her wits because the motherhood was often the consequence of some misfired love affair. At the time, we thought it must be some miracle of Science that the father would know about his daughter's pregnancy while she herself did not. This inadvertent humor would be followed by a gut-wrenching song about her life of shame and ignominy ahead.
From Kajol to Shilpa Shetty and Aishwarya Rai to Rani, every actress has gone through this gestation period of chewing and conjecturing by the Media until the next round of intense guesstimates begin on what would be the probable name of the new arrival.
Shutterbugs, of course, have a field day trying to click the celebrity from different angles, trying to produce some photographic evidence of the pregnancy while the latter is supposed to hide it worse than a state-kept secret. Everyone partakes of this hypothesizing because its not their baby anyway.
Earlier, the celebrities would occasionally add grist to the rumour mills by making vague and ambiguous statements but now the Media does its own diagnosis. In Rani's case, the grapevine was fertilized by her request for help while climbing the stairs and her co-star Madhuri Dixit lending her a helping hand on the sets of Jhalak Dikhla Jaa.There is a strong reason to speculate (!) that Madhuri's gracious gesture was born out of similar predicament she went through in her years of pregnancy. I say years because the Media is known to spend a couple of years "expecting" the child and a year "confirming" the pregnancy before the new born actually descends on the scene. That's carrying the contemplation to its test-tube gestation!
Some embedded journalist also concluded that Rani arrived on the sets of the show late because she had an appointment with the doctor and she had a mild bout with Flu. So the next time a celebrity visits a doctor with Flu -- before or after marriage -- the signals are clear: The stork is about to visit.
Rani herself added to this pregnant pause by saying she "expects soon." When asked if she was looking to start a family, she said "that is why I and Aditya Chopra are married." That clarification -- unless it was a subtle barb -- makes sense in an age when even children understand the repercussions of a pregnancy before marriage but gossip mongers interpret it as her "grand confession." It absolves them from the charge of prying into her personal life.
A celebrity's pregnancy, real or purported, is an opportunity for the Media to "educate" us on the "afterglow and radiance" evidenced on her beautiful face. Wonder where all the feminists go into hiding when they read this; as "afterglow and radiance" are not known to have spared lesser mortals as well. I remember actress Jessica Simpson as saying that "People always say that pregnant women have a glow. And I say it’s because you’re sweating to death."
If you ask me, a woman doesn't get pregnant to give employment to doctors or media persons. Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant experience not available to males. It is a woman's ultimate creative experience of a lifetime.
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