I often think of Einstein when I see Orry. To put these two proper nouns in the same sentence is unexpected, of course – there’s the ubiquitous recall value of Einstein’s name and there’s the contrast of “Orry? Orry who?” By this I mean that Einstein is remembered for something, even though many might not know what that something is, while no one seems to have yet figured out why Orry is famous.
“Einstein’s brain is a mythical object,” writes Roland Barthes in his essay The Brain of Einstein, “he is commonly signified by his brain, which is like an object for anthologies, a true museum exhibit… he is a superior, a prodigious organ”. And Orry? When one googles for his real name, the first search question that comes up is “Who is Orry and why is he famous?” Orry is Orhan Awatramani, and though one learns a little about his family background, and that he is “a familiar face at Bollywood parties, often seen mingling with star kids”, one actually discovers nothing about him. “Who doesn’t know who Orry is?” That’s Sara Ali Khan’s rhetorical response on Koffee with Karan. “Loved but misunderstood,” she and Ananya Panday say, trying to describe him. “But that’s not a profession. What do you do? I am loved but misunderstood… That’s how you describe a phenomenon, not a person,” says Johar. Notice that word: “phenomenon”; it belongs to the same register as “genius”, used for Einstein.
“He is really funny… yes, he’s really good with captions”, continues Panday, to which an amused and exasperated Johar says, “You still haven’t told me – what does he do?” “He does a lot – he works on himself”. It is this character of unknowability about Orry, someone who is known only for being “Orry”, that gives him the Einstein-like aura and mystique. “What does Orry do?” is a question that has troubled Indians over the last few months. When poor Orry was asked that question, he had a very scientific answer: “You do your job, you’re a jobber. You paint, you are a painter. I live, I am a liver”. If one were to ask that question to Einstein, I wonder whether the poor scientist would have said that he was a “relative” since he was working on a theory of relativity.
{{/usCountry}}“He is really funny… yes, he’s really good with captions”, continues Panday, to which an amused and exasperated Johar says, “You still haven’t told me – what does he do?” “He does a lot – he works on himself”. It is this character of unknowability about Orry, someone who is known only for being “Orry”, that gives him the Einstein-like aura and mystique. “What does Orry do?” is a question that has troubled Indians over the last few months. When poor Orry was asked that question, he had a very scientific answer: “You do your job, you’re a jobber. You paint, you are a painter. I live, I am a liver”. If one were to ask that question to Einstein, I wonder whether the poor scientist would have said that he was a “relative” since he was working on a theory of relativity.
{{/usCountry}}“E = mc2 … photographs of Einstein show him standing next to a blackboard covered with mathematical signs of obvious complexity; but cartoons of Einstein (the sign that he has become a legend) show him chalk still in hand, and having just written on an empty blackboard, as if without preparation, the magic formula of the world,” writes Barthes in this essay in Mythologies. If Einstein had a prodigious brain and was turned into a cartoon, Orry has a superhuman hand and has become a meme. When asked to explain why he puts his hand on different parts of a famous person’s body while posing for a photograph – on Ananya Panday’s shoulder, Deepika Padukone’s stomach, Kareena Kapoor’s chest, for instance – he explains that his hand has magical powers: it reduces a person’s age, “a thirty-two-year-old becomes twenty-six years old”. He is not paid to attend parties, he clarifies, but he is indeed paid more than 20 lakhs to pose in photos with the famous. Orry has reversed the normal: it is not he, the lesser-known person, who wants to be in a photograph with an actor or business person; it is the famous person who wants to be in a photo with Orry. Why that is we do not yet know. Orry, then, is a phenomenon, not in the sense of being phenomenal, but as a manifestation of our new culture where one’s business infrastructure is one’s own archive, real and fabricated and elastic; his hand; his half-drunk gaze at the camera even when he might be sober; his collection of quirky mobile phone covers; his studious performance of naivete chic; his conversations with the paparazzi who could well be his employees …
YOLO, once an acronym for You Only Live Once, is now “You Only Love Orry”, a truism endorsed by Orry on his T-shirt. What Orry’s tee gives us is not anthem but instruction, almost like a formula – “YOLO” seems as potent as E=mc2. The magic of the world, which Einstein’s formula purports to give to us, has been replaced by the mystery around a man about whom one knows nothing and must continue to know nothing. “I’M A LIVER” was the slogan on Orry’s black tee when he came to the Big Boss house. He is quoting himself – being his own archive, he is all that he needs to know about the world. The universe has quite clearly shrunk since the time of Einstein.
Generations of parents have wanted their children to be like Einstein. But we are in a new world now. “Who do you post these photos for?” asks Salman Khan. Orry’s response makes him sound like a celebrity UNICEF ambassador: “For the children of the world”. “Now there is one Orry, they will want to be like me, there will be thousands of Orrys…”
Sumana Roy is a poet and writer.