I AM feeling a lot like director Priyadarshan's fictional character Billu Barber.
In the film, Billu, a village barber turns into an overnight celebrity when news of his childhood friendship with superstar Shah Rukh Khan starts doing the rounds of his village.
His status is elevated overnight and people who don't even know him show up at his door with offers of help.
I am glad not too many people know where my door is.
Since last week, my mail box has been filled with requests, my cell phone has buzzed so many times that I've been forced to switch it to a perpetually silent mode. Random folks call my office line pretending to pitch stories, when all they want is a brush with the stars.
Acquaintances have re-surfaced almost as dramatically as they had exited from my life. I have open-ended invites to lunches, to dinners, to drinks, even to salons to get my hair done.
"Please bring Katrina and Akshay along," the invitations breezily spell out.
Your wish, is as good as mine!
It all started when I wrote about Priyadarshan filming his action comedy De Dana Dan in Singapore with a who's who cast from Bollywood.
Let me share a little secret: They are not my best pals.
I only get to hang around with them because I have a job to do. And they only agreed to let me in, if I didn't go about disclosing locations or room numbers or the hotels they are staying at. Trust me, I've been as good as my word.
Even my best pal was a little taken aback, when I told her "I am not liberty to disclose that".
"Gosh, you sound rather officious. Trust me, I am not interested," she shot back.
Welcome to a journalist's life. You keep your word, you get more stories. Watch this space.
But it is fun to see how the facts in the stories one reports soon transform into fiction.
At a dinner last weekend, a lady told me she'd seen Akshay Kumar in Clarke Quay (for the record, he wasn't even in town). I listened, nodded my head and complimented her on her deep insider information.
I did my rounds, she did hers and when we bumped into each other again, I was introduced as 'the writer'.
"Can you introduce me to Akshay?" she sheepishly asked. "Actually I was about to ask you to do the same," I responded.
We left it at that.
These days, even my children update me about all the Bollywood spottings around town.
They were at Padang, at Clarke Quay, "at a local hotel". Now, that sounds awfully familiar.
"How did you know that?" I asked my six-year-old. "You know, my friend's mother read it in The Straits Times," he told me.
At the risk of sounding a tad self-promotional, keep reading the paper for more starry updates.
Until then, your news is just as good as mine.
Oh yes, you can still have me over for that dinner. If you don't mind, I'd like to leave Kats and Akki behind.