Ever since the rising political tension followed by the dramatic election result was unleashed like a coiled spring there has been a lull in the news. It’s that mid-summer moment, between the stifling heat and the arrival of the monsoon, known as the silly season. So if Sheetal Mafatlal, Mumbai’s social butterfly who was carted off to jail to the rattle of rocks on smuggling charges, hadn’t happened she would have to be invented. Or else the Indian public would have been deprived of its tastiest silly-season story.
Long part of the English lexicon, schadenfreude, a wonderful word in the German language, sums up the episode beautifully. It means deriving malicious pleasure from the misfortune of others: Schaden = harm + freude = joy. Mock horror and secret delight—what greater pleasure than watching a Malabar Hill type, a woman who preens and pouts and poses, wears Valentino and sleeps in Versace, meet her comeuppance? If there is “social justice” to be found, here is a form of it, offering rich pickings in a full-blown example of the sleaze-ridden lifestyle of the rich and famous.
Sheetal Mafatlal’s undeclared and undervalued jewels are just the shining tip of a saga that contains the dissipated fortunes of a textile magnate, a vicious family feud, a sex change and much else. But she’s no Paris Hilton, famous-for-being-famous symbol of tabloid overexposure and YouTube excess, who gives as good as she gets, and markets her social appearances, sex videos and reality TV shows into a brand that sells nightclubs, scent, clothing and energy drinks. Paris Hilton once admitted to charging $200,000 for a 20-minute appearance at a party (“If it’s in Japan I get more”), thereby exploding the myth of the brainless bimbo.
Sheetal’s brand, Mafatlal Luxury, isn’t in that league yet but if her society friends shed their schadenfreude for a minute, they could help her catch the zeitgeist which clearly decrees that notoriety is a key component of celebrity. Sheetal Mafatlal could brazen it out and become India’s Paris Hilton. She could skilfully negotiate the celebrity-hungry demands of videotape and publishing, earn her rocks back, and help refill the family coffers. Instead Sheetal’s set, made up of Mumbai’s ladies-who-lunch, remain primly tight-lipped (not a line of public sympathy in her support), suggesting that India is relatively innocent to the rigours of free trade in an open market, which is as much an economic fact as a social phenomenon, and often held up as an example of an amoral space.
However ambivalent our attitude to the changing marketplace, we’re getting there. Who would have even heard of someone like Sheetal Mafatlal in the pre-Page 3 era 10 or 15 years ago, much less have her exploding on TV screens and newspaper headlines in a mad rush of paparazzi lunacy? Such publicity used to be reserved for the peccadilloes of political leaders, movie stars or corrupt officials, not for some peripheral social figure chiefly known for throwing or going to parties.
The rash of tabloids, franchised foreign glossies, TV shows and websites has made social coverage a media staple; PR-orchestrated, rent-a-celebrity social events, often disguised as charity fundraisers, peddle foreign couture, cars, jewellery—anything that’s marketable. Top Bollywood and sports stars hog much of corporate advertising, selling cement, cosmetics and chocolates. B-listers career around the country, cutting ribbons and issuing sound bites at multiplexes and shopping malls. But it’s not always an easy ride.
Take the worldwide market in fragrances, said to be worth $30 billion. In India celebrities like Shahrukh Khan, Shilpa Shetty, Ritu Kumar and Rocky S have tried to brand perfumes with their tags but failed. But who knows, Sheetal Mafatlal may be just the ticket for the gems trade. If Paris Hilton can market her favoured sniff in bottles, India may be ready for the scent of a woman called Sheetal.
