Is it just me or this constant and cloying profession of romantic love by some celebrity couples is getting a bit much? Be it Priyanka Chopra asserting the joys of her improbably cutesy new married life with Nick Jonas or Ranveer Singh slathering us with his relentless love for Deepika Padukone the media needs to create some distance now. It is as if it is not enough that both love their spouses so much, they have to coopt the rest of the world into their syrupy romance as well. There is so much residual love here that the world does not how to handle it.
“Yaar, yeh pyar na hua gulab jamun ho gaya,” has been my private reaction to all the gushing stories in Indian newspapers about the two latest couples. By the way, that Hindi line means, “Is it love or Gulab Jamun?” Gulab jamun is a popular Indian dessert prepared with balls of milk solids called khoya and soaked in rose-scented syrup. At its best, gulab jamuns are irresistibly delicious, albeit cloyingly sweet. Hence my somewhat peeved response, “Yaar yeh pyar na hua gulab jamun ho gaya.”
Both these couples have extracted every ounce out of their recent headline-grabbing weddings. Chopra and Singh miss no opportunity at all to talk about it and create one where one may not exist. Chopra appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and talked about it again. One particularly hard decision that confronted her was whether to get married on a private island away from the hoi polloi. This is how she summed it up: "We were like really stressed about it because we've got Seychelles, Maldives, Mauritius…whatever..." That was until Jonas suggested India and she was like, of course.
So they are now, like, married and stuff.
And I am, like, can we now not talk about it?
And the world is, like, whatever.
