Netflix gave Shalini Passi a spotlight. The internet made her into memes. She was called delusional and dumb. But Passi created a business model out of this clout.
In a culture obsessed with being taken seriously, The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives (Fabulous Lives) star proved that being talked about is valuable. Especially when you know exactly when to stop being the punchline, monetise it, and start being the brand.
Just like that, more than a year after stepping into the spotlight with her appearance on the hit Netflix show, Passi has returned to the headlines, this time with a memoir titled The Art of Being Fabulous: 10 Rules for a Beautiful Mind & Life, published by Penguin India.
Passi is the latest celebrity to “write” her story. From Prince Harry to Priyanka Chopra, everyone is an author, and even social media content creators are lining up to publish a book. And it doesn’t matter if it’s ghostwritten, if they even have something to say or if it is simply to establish themselves as an “intellectual.”
This pattern signals that intelligence isn’t the main criterion for writing a book. Clout and money can do the job just fine. Unlike Uorfi Javed, who milked her negative clout and later reframed it through her reality show, Follow Kar Lo Yaar, by sharing her struggles to earn sympathy and empathy. Passi didn’t even bother with that arc in her book, because, well, she doesn’t have one.
Passi’s story isn’t the “self-made, did-it-all-alone” one. Her struggles, as she mentioned in the book, were about “not being confident in pictures.”
So the real question is, why take the long route when she could have reached the destination with a snap of her fingers? Well, I think it’s part of her “I work really hard” narrative, which includes buying expensive art, learning (questionable) singing, and throwing outrageously fancy parties. While it is just the wealthy doing what they do best, Passi knows how to sprinkle a little performance on top, or as she would call it, “fabulousness”.
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The journey to sensationalism
When Passi first appeared on Fabulous Lives in October 2024, she was not positioned as the “relatable” one. She wasn’t grounded. She wasn’t humble. And, her extravagant lifestyle, unlike Tanya Mittal of Bigg Boss fame, wasn’t restricted to just talks.
Her dramatic outfits, a museum-like house, and paintings worth crores called the masses “poor” in a hundred languages.
But the mockery came fast. She became a popular meme template. Her dialogues, such as “The only reason I don’t hold grudges against other people is because it affects my skin,” went viral. Fashion police had a fun time decoding and roasting her flashy gowns and bags.
At first glance, Passi’s journey looked like the classic reality TV fate, which has three phases: be ridiculous, become viral, and then eventually fade out. But mockery, in Passi’s case, was just unpaid marketing. After all, publicity is good publicity, right?
In the influencer economy, there are two types of creators: those you relate to and those you observe. Passi was in category two. By doing this, she repositioned herself from “reality show character” to a social media personality or what we popularly call “Influencer” (I hate that word).
Brands don’t always need relatability; they need recall. And Passi’s recall was bulletproof. Her following stands at 1.5 million on Instagram. And, according to a report by Qoruz, an influencer marketing agency, her engagement rate stands at 0.54 per cent with estimated views on videos more than 350k.
Also Read: No, Shalini Passi doesn’t represent Delhi women
The marketing genius that is Shalini Passi
One of the most common mistakes reality TV stars make is launching something too quickly. They try to make the most of the clout. But, Passi didn’t.
She allowed the influencer phase to breathe. The mockery slowly turned into fascination. Her collabs with Netflix India, Dolce & Gabbana, and Alexander McQueen kept her trending.
Slowly, the discourse shifted from “What is she saying?” to “Only she could say this”. A subtle but important transition.
And when the time was ripe, she dropped the memoir. The buzz is such that everyone is talking about it. People are desperate to grab a copy.
Maybe it’s just to mock her because even though her marketing team is genius, Passi isn’t. But, love her or side-eye her, in the theatre of reality TV, it might be the smartest line she never even had to say.
From a business point of view, the book launch doesn’t feel like a desperate cash grab. It feels like an extension of the persona she had been carefully, and publicly, building. A perfect embodiment of Passi’s “I am a loving person” character, chock-a-block with examples of how she overcame this or helped that cause. It’s just another feather in her hat. Something she can brag about at her MASH Ball or probably the next season of Fabulous Lives.
But her journey from a Netflix show to social media star and now an author tells us one thing that Passi understands something many people still don’t; clout doesn’t need validation, it needs the RIGHT direction.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)