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| Look at 'em, just lookie!!! |
Call it star craze or comfortably settling into a state of perpetual one sided love; the incident of myself being a John Galt to two men that will never be mine, leaves a sense of a certain hopelessness that I’ve come to make peace with. It is perhaps the custom of this unrequited appeal to make me understand that it’s the idea of those men and not themselves that breaks my force of habit and keeps me mooning over them. And if that be the case, it answers the eternal question of what is more attractive- the man himself or what you think he is? And honestly, that’s an answer I’d like to push to the deepest corners of my head and forget it exists.
What the two men share besides their first name, occupation and state of single hood is a sensibility that may not be uncommon but is certainly a rare find in their profession. They are called the thinking woman’s actor, implying that what they do and how they do it appeals to a certain class of women who cannot leave their brains at home when watching a movie. But it’s not so complicated after all, you don’t think when you are too busy catching every well pronounced word that falls out of their mouth, you are certainly not thinking when they flash a smile, or their neat hands nestle their face in a particularly brooding moment. Besides the head rush you experience, you almost walk into the scene as it were and imagine you were there for him to look at and talk to.
The travesty of them having a name that is most overused in the Hindi film industry takes a leap when the on screen namesakes, buffoon their way through basketball hoops and wet saris to deliver a super-hit film. At those times, I wish they had a different name, because these namesakes and their ‘acts’ add a certain degree of modesty that shakes the pedestal and makes them more real; and I don’t think I’m comfortable with that. You see, I’ve come to love that state of being a ‘nobody’ to them, I absolutely gloat in the headiness of being Mr Galt.
I rewind and replay thousands of times a particular moment in their films, I stalk their blogs/profiles/handles/interviews like the creepiest person you know, I swallow without pause a hand gesture or a casual guffaw and mostly, I make family of the hundreds out there who share my state of being.
I behave like the hopeless lover who’s too timid to establish a real contact, knowing that if it were to happen he’ll come up too short. So let them be the demigods that they are; naturally articulate, well groomed, well read, spontaneous, witty, humorous and say things like ‘misplaced intention’ or some such as often as we say ‘shit’- I can live a lifetime of looking like the backside of a pan and not care!
They can continue to grace the covers of fashion magazines, support charities, run marathons or just feed their ‘extremely- fortunate- cause- they- get- to- lie- in- the- bed- with- them’ pets or sleep with their mouths open. They are the only two whose wet towels I’ll pick up when they forget it on the bed, the only two whose feet I’ll sit at and watch them talk, and the only two I’ll grovel for whenever, wherever.
I’m putty, I’m John Galt, and I like being that way.
