Many of you are Chetan Bhagat fans. Many have read his books. But some are fans not because they have a clue about his books /any book for that matter, but because Bhagat is/was a fan of the PM. Some of the twitterati retweet his tweets, like his posts and generally support whatever he says and does because we are part of this extended fan family establishment, a fan parivar of sorts maybe?

Let us look at another fan situation - Salman Khan fans erupted into celebrations when the court verdict came this week. Many fans including Anupam Kher cheered on. “Truth prevails” tweeted Kher. Sure, truth prevails – this is the one Khan who did not participate in # intolerance speeches or #award wapsi business, but traded the sport of shooting deer for flying kites...

If you go further south this “fanism” (for lack of a better word) turns pretty much into fanaticism. The best/worst fans (depending on which side of the fan aisle you are on) are the extreme fans of Rajnikant, Jayalalitha etc, in Chennai, where fans self-immolate when their leaders catch a cold or simply go to jail.

But that is what fans are for. Blindly follow your hero, whether the hero is right or not, lose all objective thought and reason, and transform into the state of “fanness” (the state of being a fan, akin to nirvana) or sometimes become plain smoke (if you are a fan who pursues the self-immolation path to nirvana).

Being a fan is not without its perils - if you are a # RamRahimSingh fan, you literally lose your balls- atleast 400 of his fans voluntarily (?) got castrated, or if you are a #Baba Ramdev fan - you chow down the worms in the noodles from Ramdev Noodle Company Inc – you are a fan… Or take swig or two of the cow urine cola (Cowco Cola, yes it exists!!) if you are a fan of a different kind.

Fans also serve another purpose, i.e trash heroes of the opposite group.  A good example is the action of fans who oppose the PM’s foreign travels, when he is fulfilling the much needed role of a salesman role for the country. As fans we don’t care about the merits or demerits or an argument, all that matters is that the argument is from the opposite group and hence is ALWAYS bad. Somewhere along the path of “fanness” some fans tread into the fanatic territory.

Probably that explains why bright folks like Chetan Bhagat sometimes make these block headed utterances. One such absurd statement is the argument about men being robbed in cars, blah blah blah…. We all know that Bhagat is NOT a great fan of Kejriwal, but is allowing women a safety exception in Delhi such a bad idea, even if comes from Kejriwal?

Should smart people like Bhagat stoop to the level of a Jayalalitha fan/fanatic?

For more perspectives http://www.netamaker.com/zing.php

#Oddevenrule #oddevenlogic #AAP #BJP @ArvindKejriwal @ChetanBhagat