by Portuguese Man-Of-War » Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:00 pm
Andhrawala, you have been rather practical. Let's think from basics.
Chiranjeevi is highly unlikely to enter politics to serve people - he will enter them since his career as hero is ending, he has a huge mass following, and the most logical step in his career going forward is to utilize that strength of his to further his career. The only career where a huge mass following helps is politics.
If Chiranjeevi's heart bled for the common man, he'd have much lesser property in his name today. What's he worth - a 100 crores? I think that's more than you need for a reasonable standard of living (a decent house, decent furnishings and a car) and a bank balance that will take care of any medical emergencies and a good education for your kids.
Will he then consider donating all his wealth except whatever is needed for the above? He'd be changing a few thousand lives if he chose to do that. He'll be acknowledgedly a better human being than me then. I'll vote for him, I'll campaign for him, I'll officially bow to him as his fan.
Let me go off on a slight detour. I have always thought that AP is full of people who think their life's objective is to be the fan of a movie star.
To me, this is among the worst ways that you can degrade yourself.
The only people you should idolize to that extent are people who are selfless, who will never tread the wrong path for selfish gains, and who will give up things dearest to them to help someone in dire need.
Instead, we abuse others, spend lots of time on Internet forums and sometimes kill ourselves for people who are rich, famous, and will not part with them for anything.
The worst of us even keep track of the castes of actors, and decide to take sides based on those.
It's one thing to like a guy who can entertain you, and quite another to degrade yourself as most "fans" do, stamping yourself as a Chiranjeevi, Balakrishna or Mahesh fan. Sheesh! Man, you're a human being who God created to be equal to any else - why are you officially declaring yourself to be a worshipper of someone else who is just good at his trade, and who has all the good things in life you will perhaps never have?
And most times, we do it for people whose only claim to fame is whose sperm they were born off - most of Tollywood today is actor sons and brothers who would never have cleared a screen test by themselves.
Coming back to being practical, since rural AP has a good number of semi-literate people who think a movie hero is exactly that way in real life, perhaps Chiranjeevi will come to power. We don't need to worry - it's not like he'll be displacing any saints. Things can't get much worse than they are with a CM who openly takes revenge on a newspaper that exposes his and his partymen's misdemeanours, and who projects himself as a saint for giving up land he illegally held, claiming he did not know it was wrong (the head of the state's government says this).
Hopefully, Chiranjeevi will decide that he has enough money, and that he will genuinely serve people. We are not looking for saints to lead us - it's enough if they are not sinners, or at least lesser sinners than the alternatives.