Switch on your television and sniff the latest narcotic wafting out of the screen. It is fame. And of course, we all want a sniff.

Now don’t mistake this fame with success which is hard won and long staying. This kind of fame is achieved when proud parents let lose their precocious teenager with scalpels on a pregnant woman. Chasing fame is a national pass-time and so parents thrust their kids into the maelstrom of talent shows. Young people take appalling rudeness in their stride during the auditions of MTV’s Roadies — just so they will be on TV. If TV is inaccessible, a newspaper article will do.

Once a woman approached me during a discussion on euthanasia with a request for an article because she “likes to party”. The hunger for fame, not excellence, is what makes celebs on-the-make approach journalists for a cup of coffee.

This kind of success feeds on word of mouth. The mouth of the person, who wants the world to join his/her parade. So, every time they conquer the world with their banalities, we must be told.

The ‘Bangalore Show’ leading up to the ‘CNN-IBN Indian of the Year Award’ attracted hordes of authentic and wannabe celebrities, who wanted their faces to grace national television, for maybe a few seconds.

Fame today is all about self-promotion of the most blatant kind. So people smile into the camera from behind the head of a TV reporter in the middle of a flood report.

Everyone wants a moment of immortality, somehow. And those who already have it, want some more. Take Himesh Reshmiyya. Or Shahrukh Khan. If one is threatening to make a sequel to Aapka Suroor, where he will — hold your breath — tell you the secret behind the ubiquitous cap, the other deluged our senses and aggressively campaigned for our eye balls before the release of Om Shanti Om.

Shahrukh Khan was on every TV show, every news channel, in every newspaper, even cricket matches to talk about OSO. The media, of course, played right into his hands, like always, using hyperbolic phrases to describe his six-pack — which almost every impoverished rickshaw puller in Kolkata possibly has.

That brings one to the question that Rajdeep Sardesai asked at the CNN-IBN awards. Who is a real icon?
Here is a counter question. Can a media event with complimentary drinks, the glamour of young women dressed in red sarees and a revolving model of a Swarovski trophy, seriously talk about grassroots heroism?

Yes, there was a category devoted to social activism and everyone rooted for Kausalya, a truck driver’s AIDS afflicted wife, who has started an NGO to help other women. But it remains to be seen if she will be seen or talked about as much as nominees in the entertainment and sports categories.

For real heroes like Kausalya, being on TV is less important than doing something real and worthwhile. There are many like her in this country, who march to their drum and are not slaves of public opinion. They do not chase TV cameras. They don’t have to.

For some, their life’s work is their achievement and their reward. Grit, passion and integrity cannot be stage-managed.