Indians won’t support Bigg Boss couple Anup Jalota & Jasleen Matharu because they aren’t sexy

Anup Jalota and Jasleen Matharu | Instagram/jasleenmatharu

Most people shocked at Bigg Boss couple Anup Jalota and Jasleen Matharu are just jealous that a bhajan singer is getting more action. 

Let’s face it, Anup Jalota is no Milind Soman to look at. Jalota is a bhajan singer with a beer belly and is the latest entrant in the Bigg Boss TV series. He doesn’t run marathons to support women empowerment, or have the perfect head of salt and pepper hair, and has been married three times before he met 28-year-old singer Jasleen Matharu. As far as optics go, he is so far from being the ideal poster-child for the right to privacy that liberals are unlikely to touch him with a ten-foot-pole.

So, why is everyone raging about Anup Jalota and his life suddenly?

Because the 65-five-year-old singer of ‘Aisi Lagi Lagan, Meera Ho Gayi Magan’ has come under considerable flak ever since he went public with the announcement that he and his girlfriend, Jasleen, will be joining Bigg Boss as a part of their couple’s edition this year.

Whether you watch Bigg Boss or not, most Indians have decided that Anup Jalota cannot possibly be in love with a woman 37-years younger than him because the thought of him having sex with her just isn’t sexy enough, even for the sexually emancipated. These settings for romance only apply to say a suave billionaire Richard Gere romancing a strong and independent Julia Roberts.

It’s not difficult to jump to the conclusion that this entire Jasleen-Anup (#Jasnup or #Anuja?) relationship has been borne from convenient controversy – but in the world of Bigg Boss, the bolder, the better. It’s entirely possible that Jasleen and Anup are using each other to make easy headlines, and you know what, it’s working. From Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas to Milind Soman and Ankita Konwar, Indians find it difficult to stay out of people’s bedrooms – imaginary or not. And considering that #Jasnup introduced their relationship to the world via the most voyeuristic show in the world, I think they know that too.

But unlike what other people might be arguing on the internet, Jasleen and Anup’s sex-life actually is kind of our business right now. And they certainly want it to be so. The entire premise of Bigg Boss is based on selling the rights of your life for TRP and marginal fame, so to argue against it with the right to privacy becomes markedly redundant.

The haters were always going to hate, pitch-forks in hand, ready to deflate ‘haye-Ram sex’ into palatable sugar-daddy scenarios or exploitative age-related power dynamics. But what happened to the yay-sayers – the free-lovin’, sex-positive, age-is-just-a-number brigade responsible for liberating Jalota’s pious folks from their sanskari sex. Funnily enough, it’s Jalota who comes across as the liberated one in this scenario. May be people are just jealous that a 65-year-old man who sings bhajans is getting more action than them.

The debate isn’t so much about defending Jalota himself, because no one knows enough about the nature of his relationship with Jasleen to comment on it either way, as it is about defending the possibility of #Jasnup. Bhajans or not, the right to be in a consensual relationship as an adult is reserved for everyone.

At this intersection of that which you hate (religious conservatism, and well, Bigg Boss) and that which you claim to protect (the principle of freedom of choice), in the Anup Jalota case, which one should you be rooting for?