The Arrogance Of Being Ranbir Kapoor

The most abused three words in the English dictionary are not ‘I Love You’. They are ‘I Don’t Care’. We use this phrase because we do. Care, I mean. And we want to show the world that we don’t.

But Ranbir Kapoor genuinely doesn’t care what people think about him. He has no publicist till date. And he would rather undergo root-canal surgery than pay for his media coverage.He is hugely ahugely entertaining conversationalist and during his Saawariya days he would casually drop bombs about the biggest of names. Many of these stories proved a lie later on.

Once he tipped me off about Uday Chopra directing Dhoom 3. When I broke the story he said he was making it up. The next time he called one morning to say Salman and Shah Rukh had a huge fight at Katrina’s birthday party . I refused to believe him. It turned out to be true.

At one point when we interacted closely I got to know something really scary about Ranbir. It happened when Ranbir’s Naani (mom Neetu Kapoor’s mother) passed away . Ranbir’s Naani lived with Ranbir and his family in their bungalow. The Naani’s room was bang opposite Ranbir’s room in the bungalow. She would be in and out of her darling grandson’s room inquiring about his meal and whereabouts with heart-melting concern.

Yup she doted om Ranbir, But when the Naani died Ranbir shocked me by confessing, “I felt nothing when she died.”

He hasn’t changed much over the years. Arrogance is not a vanity in Ranbir. It’s a way of life for him. He knows no other way to be. The new video where he’s shown being exceedingly discourteous to his fan in Varanasi should not surprise those who know Ranbir closely. He doesn’t make an attempt to behave one way or another with people.He behaves in whatever way he feels like without sugarcoating his responses for the sake of civility.

That poor fan, in Varanasi,whoever he might be, meant zilch to Ranbir’s life and he wasn’t at all shy of showing his indifference. That the fan sat at his feet is also in character. Ranbir doesn’t really have friends(sorry, Ayan Mukerjee, that’s the truth). He is way too guarded to allow anyone access into his true feelings.

If it is any consolation to that fan in Varanasi, I want him to know that Ranbir didn’t mean to insult him. The abrasive behaviour is not put-on. It is the way he is. Ranbir has zero-tolerance for people less intelligent than him. Unlike his peers he cannot spend time trying to be nice to people who don’t matter to him(and that covers just about 99 percent of the world around Ranbir).

He once confessed to me that he found pleasantries and other social niceties to be an utter waste of time. In all the time that I knew him well I never hard him say good things about anyone,and I am sure he has only contempt for me as well.

I can live with that. I just hope that fan in Varanasi feels the same way.