IR #067

While the whole country has been engrossed in the JNU sedition debate and the see-saw battle with new videos and new revelations making their foray on a daily basis, we have noticed an eerie silence from the usually vocal segments of Bollywood. We tried getting in touch with many celebrities and received the exactly same reply from their agents and managers- “Sir/Madam is on vacation.”

After receiving the following responses from all major A-listers, we decided to dig a little deeper into the situation. A separate team was also deployed to analyze if there was some new anomaly on Cleartrip because of which tickets were being sold at ludicrous prices. What we managed to unearth is beyond comprehensible.

All major celebrities had decided to go on vacation to get away from questions by the media on the JNU issue and their anti-nationalist sentiments. It is still to be ascertained whether this was a deliberate boycott by Bollywood or an escape mechanism adopted to stay away from controversy. One thing is clear though- it is not a coincidence.

Celebrities with existing shooting schedules like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan have moved their shoot to international locations. We have had insider reports of art directors tearing their hair out trying to convert Brussels into rural Haryana. Actresses like Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra have conveniently bagged roles in Hollywood movies at the same time making their absence even more suspicious. Even former stars like Twinkle Khanna and Raveena Tandon who are quite active on Twitter have chosen to maintain silence and are only posting family photographs of late.

Eminent directors and actors like Mahesh Bhatt, Karan Johar, Shabana Azmi and Anupam Kher have been spotted at various international airports with excuses ranging from shooting to furthering their study of film making. We even had reports of Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Tiger Shroff, Shraddha Kapoor and Sooraj Pancholi trying to buy tickets in black for the recently concluded Berlin Film fest.

“Due to recent impact of box office collections due to controversial statements on socio – political issues by Bollywood actors, the producers union have decided to send away all the main actors and actresses on a paid vacation until the issue of anti – nationalism is resolved or no longer hot news,” said an official statement from the producer’s association. Some producers have also resorted to adding unnecessary songs in their films so that it can be used as an excuse to keep the stars away from Indian media.

The only actress who seems to be in India at the moment is Sonam Kapoor who is busy promoting her film Neerja. No media house has approached Sonam for comments as we all unanimously agree that it would be pointless.

This article was originally published in Faking News