Of all the absurdities that manifests Bollywood news, the best/worst is an article on India.com: “5 Times Taimur Ali Khan Resembled Popular Emojis”.
Let that sink in for a bit.
An entertainment journalist, at some point, made an effort and compared the face of a 10-month-old child with ideograms and smileys used in electronic messages.
This article reads: “Taimur Ali Khan is undoubtedly one of the most loved babies of the tinsel town. Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan’s baby boy is attracting all the attention at a very tender age and why not! He is such a cute baby!”
The outrage over Taimur’s name – because he is the namesake of Taimur the Lame, a bloodthirsty 14th century Turkish conqueror, and apparently that still holds relevance – may have died long ago, but somehow entertainment journalists have not quite gotten over Taimur.
When it comes to Bollywood news, sadly, everything is fair game. Even a baby. With that in mind, let us peek-a-boo at the most absurd news about Baby Taimur:
The royal baby’s photos
An NDTV piece from October 21 declares, “This Pic Of Saif Ali Khan And Baby Taimur Will Brighten Your Diwali Celebrations”, but is that a promise we can hold? Having shown this photo around, we have reached a conclusion that it really does not. Yes, the child does look adorable, but not really enough to make people forget about the air pollution, the noise of crackers, and Chetan Bhagat making a Supreme Court judgment look communal.
More photos of Taimur
It wasn’t just the Diwali photo that captured the collective imagination of entertainment journalists. The pre-Diwali photos managed to make quite an impact as well. Both The Indian Express and Hindustan Times made us well aware of that with their pieces called “Kick start your Diwali with these adorable clicks of Taimur Ali Khan”, and “Taimur Ali Khan is all dressed up for his first Diwali, see pics”.
Perhaps there is more to this child than meets the eye.
A party animal
If you think Taimur only chills with his folks, gets clicked cute photos of himself in Diwali ethnic-wear, and limits his expressions to emojis, then you are mistaken. The star-child also knows how to party. In fact, according to Indian Express, Kareena and Saif may have attended Soha Ali Khan’s birthday party, but it was Taimur who made the best exit. That’s right! “Dressed in a blue baby suit, Taimur looked as intrigued as always to find the attention of all the camera lenses on him,” wrote a scribe, describing to thousands of readers what a child was supposedly doing at a party they would never attend.
A Vogue report on this important story added, “All bundled up in dad Saif’s arms, Taimur crashed the birthday celebration twinning with his mom in baby blue.” One can easily conclude from these two reports that this 10-month-old child is no emoji-face-making, Diwali-celebrating good boy we have been made to believe. He crashes parties.
A baby on the go
Parties or not, this baby is going places. Quite literally to airports; and possibly somewhere else from there on. The Indian Express, which seems to have a dedicated Taimur team, reported that, “These pictures of Taimur Ali Khan at the airport will certainly make you go awww, yet again”. While the reaction caused may have been less than the promised “awww, yet again”, there is no denying that this celebrity child has a serious case of the wanderlust.
One has to, at some point, question the rationale behind making a baby the focus of our attention, especially considering that the baby isn’t really doing anything special. Oh wait, that’s not true. Only some time ago India Today reported that Taimur Ali Khan was “spotted swinging his way to glory at his Bandra residence”.