YAHAN PAR ITNI KHAMOSHI THI, AAJ YAHAN RAVIVAAR KE SHAAM ITNA KHAUF KYUN HAI ?? ... BY ALI PETER JOHN

Time was when I used to sit on a stone bench opposite the Juhu Beach and watch stars, superstars and not so big stars passing by in their posh cars with hardly any security men around them - Ali Peter John

And I could see stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit waving out to their fans from their cars and the fans who came from far away places felt and believed that they had seen the stars in the sky and went home delighted.

And i am now sitting alone in a cafe near the Juhu Beach and I can see the cars of the same stars speeding by with their window panes tinted and protected from all sides.

The same stars who were once hungry to win the adulation of their fans, were now running away from them and even scaring them with their black and ugly bouncers who look more ugly - looking and scary when they carry with them the latest and all kinds of automatic weapons which can kill within seconds.

Are these bouncers a way to kill the people who have made nobodies into the stars they are today. ?
As I look down the road, I see "Jalsa" where Amitabh Bachchan lives with his family and thirty one servants.

And once there were thousands of people standing outside Jalsa waiting for just one glimpse of the man who they believed was an Avtar of God.

Now it is a Sunday evening and there are just barricades outside Jalsa and hefty bouncers but there is not a soul or a body outside Jalsa.

The scene outside now looks more frightening than it used to look when crowds of men, women and children waited all day for just that one darshan of the avtar.

I ask one of the bouncers if Sahab is inside and he foolishly lies and says "Aaj kal Sahab yahan nahi rehte".

I smile, sorry I smirk and walk with a limp in my left foot and go around the haunted bungalows of Dharmendra, Shatrughan Sinha, Jeetendra Ramanand Sagar whose family has lived in the two bungalows he had built for his sons when he was alive.

The sons of Sagar have broken into two families and strangely this was what I had predicted twenty years ago when Sagar was alive.

And now the entire Juhu Vile Parle Scheme looks like a place which has just been devastated by a terrorist (Covid) attack and yet every bungalow is surrounded by bouncers, gunmen in black uniforms, and other hideous looking men.

I wonder as I walk around whether these gunmen will succeed in shooting down the Corona Virus and now the Omicron to save their powerful, popular and poor bosses ( Covid has reduced all powerful men and women to little insects who prefer to hide in their holes , sorry, homes .

As I move towards Versova, I look around at all those places where celebrities lived like kings and queens once and are now living in fear in their palatial houses like rats who are scared of coming out for fear of the cats, sorry the viruses, Corona and Omicron having a wild go at them.

PACCHAAS SAAL INHI GALIYON MEIN BHATAK RAHA HOON AUR INHI LONGO KE BEECH REHTA HOON, LEKIN MERE DOSTO KO MAINE ITNE KAUF MEIN REHTE HUE KABHI NAHI AUR YEH KHAUF KAB TAK RAHEGA ??