A star-struck society..

I attended the Ad-Asia Conference in Delhi on Tuesday, and I was surprised to find that the inaugural was by Shah Rukh Khan, along with Ambika Soni.
Suprised because, well, if Ad-asia had invited whoever had publicized Ra-One I would have understood the point; inviting SRK seemed as stupid to me as it would be if Aishwarya Rai was invited to speak at the Gynaecologist Annual Conference just because she is going to have a baby.
Well, I planned to miss the inaugural (no way i would be caught dead listening to a politican and a bollywood hero, and receiving gyan from them)..

Despite my best efforts, i landed up towards the end of the inaugural, and watched the tamasha from a side room: the main room was totally jampacked, and they were showing it on the CC TV.

Shah Rukh, not knowing anything much to speak about, just kept poking fun at himself, and kept the audience in splits. He then said, guys, the biggest job in India is keeping the Shah Rukh Khan brand going, and then again wandered off into his jokes. Finally, he started to dance to his chamak challo number, in desperation. Even that, he could not manage, as the music kept stopping. By now, he was drenched in sweat (imagine me going to CERN in geneva and giving a lecture on Plasma physics), and mercifully the inaugural ended.

I wondered why we are so star-struck that, to a sober professional thing such as Ad Asia, we need to bring in a bollywood star. Would the Americans bring in Al Pacino to inaugurate the Harvard Law School Seminar on Law-making in the twenty-first century? Or is it to give "value" to those who
shelled out 40,000 bucks for the three-day event?

Guess if they really, really, want to do things seriously, they need to get the right people, have multiple sessions on in smaller, different rooms,and think more in terms of solid value than be star-struck fans...