Person of the Week: Priyanka Chopra

Almost every wedding in the next year or so has to account for two visitors who show up while the bride’s uncle is halfway through cleaning melted kulfi off his jacket. I am talking, of course, of the greatest East-meets-West mash-up since Bride and Prejudice, Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas. Known to frequent observers as the “#Prick”, this new species of the “odd couple” family, has entertainment journalists coughing up blood in excitement, and Indian men planning their revenge against the White Man on YouTube.

Prick – or Joyanka, if you prefer Bengali-sounding hashtags – was last seen at the pre-engagement ceremony of one of the Ambani kids. The sighting was enough to create a furore: Priyanka’s flaming red saree was all it took for some to call to announce “Red Alert”. It was the kind of event a country like Rwanda would spend its entire GDP on, and movie stars wouldn’t dare catch themselves “dressed like that” at.

The greater half of the newest power couple, Priyanka Chopra, has meanwhile seen immense success ever since she moved abroad (someone please tell all of Lokhandwala), and has made India proud more times than the jawans at the border. She’s been invited to the Royal Wedding, where she looked good enough for people to try on her face mask, and has stolen the spotlight at least two Ambani weddings, faster than a tech guy with kleptomania. Sample this ENews headline, where the Ambanis are referred to simply as “friends” of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas. Undisclosed sources suggest that just for that snub, they might buy another cricket team.

The sudden coupling of our Person of the Week with one of the Jonas brothers, formerly seen on the back page of Bombay Times, has apparently shocked the nation. They’ve gone from being a paparazzi sighting to the kind of couple who travels halfway across the world to meet each other’s family. Insert awwww.

Some reports believe Priyanka and Nick are soon to be engaged, others show them walking around holding hands, photographers take creepshots of them indulging in some PDA at airports, and gossip magazines publish zoomed-in images of their hands, in an attempt to investigate if they were wearing similar rings. Last week, our Instagram feeds were dominated by a seven-second video of PeeCee on a terrace, trying to avoid the rain. The video, simply captioned “Her <3” was shot by Nick Jonas, and posted and re-posted a bazillion times. This is indeed a sign of true success.

When Priyanka Chopra is not going around being the most important thing at weddings, and getting engaged to former Disney princes, she’s in the news for other reasons. Last week, Times Group was panned for putting out an ad, pairing her name with the last names of her rumoured former boyfriends. These are, of course, the same people who coined arguably the greatest tabloid name in Indian history, Piggy Chops. I’m sure she has a perfectly good counter to that tone deaf ad, in her book Unfinished, a collection of stories that inspires women to dream big.

Earlier this month, Priyanka pissed half of India off with a Quantico episode that apparently painted “all Hindus as terrorists”, and then apologised immediately after to prove her proud Indian status, and cement her position as “kinda nationalist”. Meanwhile she was also named Maxim Magazine’s “Hottest Woman on the Planet” today – more reason for India to chest thump, I suppose. For this very admirable turn of events, we are honoured to call her our Person of the Week. Take away all the publicity from Baby Taimur, and head to Brazil with a Jonas brother, because this party is close to making it to the Oscars.