Just For Laughs: Shilpa Shetty in Blunderland

"They should include books like Little Women, as it encourages respect towards women at a young age. Even a book like Animal Farm can teach the little ones to love and care for animals,” thus spake Shilpa Shetty, the original leggy lass of Bollywood, until the likes of Deepika Padukone came along.

The winner of Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother in 2007 was responding to the recent move by the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education students (ICSE) to include Harry Potter, Tintin and Amar Chitra Katha as part of the English syllabus. Lauding the ICSE for the 'great move' she said it would help cultivate imagination and creativity at a young age.

This foot in tonsils remark regarding George Orwell's Animal Farm may or may not have caused a few cracks in the grave of the famous British novelist and short story writer, but for Twitterati it was a mouth watering feast they couldn't resist and #ShilpaShettyReviews was among the top trending hashtags for hours.

Almost every other well known books ranging from classics like Three Musketeers (it's about three Malayalis from Muscat) to bestsellers like Fifty Shades of Grey (It is an amazing coloring book that children will love) were used to troll her. The other worthies were ‘The Hunger Games is a great series on Karwa Chauth’; 'The Fault In Our Stars is a book where two tragic lovers can't marry because of their kundlis' and Point Counter Point: Arnab Goswami makes a point. Then he counters himself. Then he makes another point. Then he pats himself on the back. The interviewee goes home, silently sobbing.

With the country going through a crippling cash crunch following demonetisation (another trending topic) of currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations, the Twitterati was quite mindful to bring in that too - "Invisible Man is a searing story about RBI Governor Urjit Patel during demonetisation".

Shilpa Shetty's Phir Milenge co-star Salman Khan too landed at the wrong end of some hastag jousts - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude is basically Salman Khan's life story'; 'Deer Zindagi is about lives of deer in times of Salman Khan' and "Salman Khan calls #ShilpaShetty to see if the black bucks in her Animal Farm are doing okay."

Any discussion on Bollywood airheads is incomplete without reference to Alia Bhatt, who has been portrayed as the ultimate diva of ignorance-is-bliss school of thought. Many now felt Shilpa could take up Alia's mantle. 

However, amid this entire Twitterati titter, not many realised that the above news clip actually appeared not in some nondescript newspaper, but in one of the leading English dailies in the country. It needs to be asked why for an issue related to academics and education the publication thought it fit to look for a quote from an actress. Of late quotes from actors and actresses are elicited for almost any topic under the sun to sex up the story.

Secondly the reporter, who recorded the quote and the editor who put it on the page, both sleepwalked through the gaffe and allowed it to appear in print. These two are equally culpable as Shilpa Shetty ... or was it deliberately overlooked to stir up a social media storm? In this era of post-truth we never know.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat