Helen of Troy has nothing on Poonam Pandey. Helen’s face might have launched a thousand ships but our Poonam’s pics, morphed or real, have launched hundreds of thousands of tweets. Now she can add the dubious claim of sparking communal unrest to her already extensive resume.
Mamata Banerjee’s government has been SMSing all Kolkatans to “frustrate the designs of those unscrupulous people and maintain peace and communal harmony.” At issue Poonam Pandey’s own tweetpics ostensibly to congratulate Sachin on his ton. But the morphed pic manages to be an equal opportunity offender – blithely combining sex and religion. After a local newspaper published it all hell broke loose. Several days of abject apology from the newspaper followed; then came Mamata Banerjee’s exhortations for communal harmony. The only person who gained anything out of this mess – Poonam Pandey, of course. Brand Poonam just gets hotter and hotter.
Tehelka, best known for other kinds of exposes, has decided to unravel the mystery that is Poonam Pandey in its current issue. They have managed an interview with her, which, alas, is much less revealing than the tamest of Ms Pandey’s videos – Bathroom Secrets, Bedroom Secrets, Mirror Act and Dirty Play.
You probably don’t want to read about how Poonam Pandey went to the family ashram on her birthday or how her mother keeps feeding her rasgulla and papad. But the Tehelka story is worth reading because it tries to figure out what makes Poonam Pandey so enduringly hot when other starlets have streaked by like comets and disappeared into oblivion.
Think about it. As the article puts it: The wonder of it all is that the former Gladrags and Kingfisher model has accomplished this without signing a film, without dancing in an item number, without really doing the rounds of reality television, barring a nine-week showing on Khatron Ke Khiladi.
She has survived because she had proved that the old Andy Warholian formula of fifteen minutes of fame can be morphed into the eternal hotness of being Poonam Pandey with regular injections of social media. She is basically the It girl of social media who has cannily combined cricket and striptease into one winning formula that just keeps on giving. Sachin hits a ton – how about a naughty little present for him? Virat Kohli’s century gets him one as well.
But how long can Poonam Pandey get her Tweethearts to writhe with her?
“I am very bold, a new-generation girl. People have seen nothing of me yet,” Pandey confidently tells Tehelka. Rito Paul in a stirring defence of Poonam Pandey in DNA says she gets our knickers in a twist because she calls the shot on her own version of Dirty Picture.
The problem we have with the Pandeys of the world is that they’ve commodified their own sexuality, without a man present to exploit them for profit, and they’re seemingly enjoying it. How dare they? You see, even though we are singularly obsessed with naked/semi-naked women, the last thing a woman should be doing is enjoying strutting her stuff. Where’s the fun in that?
Good for Poonam Pandey. She is the boss lady who tells her team of ten (including three publicists) how to exploit Brand Poonam. But to what end? What is she subverting? Is she really pushing the envelope? Or just pulling at her undergarments?