Rana Daggubati has betrayed the media. For years now, entertainment journalists have been in a frenzy, trying to decide who Rana would get married to 'very soon', according to 'sources'. Hundreds of lines have been written about Rana's impending marriage and then hundreds more when the impending marriage did not materialise. What was causing the delay? Why wasn't Rana 'settling down'?
After all these years, Rana dropped a bomb on Tuesday, telling the world that he was getting married to Miheeka Bajaj. And the media had no clue about Miheeka, despite spending years on the topic. What an intelligence failure of epic proportions! Miheeka isn't an ex-girlfriend with whom he got back. She isn't a co-star. Her family isn't from the film industry. Nobody had a clue that she was in his life. We certainly hope that the concerned entertainment bureaus will launch a detailed investigation on what went wrong and how they let this slip through the cracks.
In 2018, Rana was asked on Koffee With Karan about his relationship with actor Trisha. The fact that the two were dating on and off was well-known and had given much fodder for the gossip mills. On the show, Rana tried to avoid the question when it was put to him, but when Karan persisted, he said, "She has been my friend for a decade. We have been friends for a long time and even dated. But, I guess, things didn't work out."
The answer was perfectly innocuous and revealed nothing at all about their relationship or why they broke up (which is, honestly speaking, none of our business).The headlines reporting this 'news', however, would have you believe that Rana had broken down on Karan's couch and had laid bare his troubled heart for hours together. 'Rana Daggubati reveals real reason behind splitting up with Trisha Krishnan' screamed one, 'Rana Daggubati on his break-up with Trisha: Things didn't work between us' said another (duhh, isn't that why most couples split up?).
It didn't stop there. A few months later, Rana and Trisha tweeted their congratulations (separately) to actor Arya when he announced his wedding, and there was wild speculation that this meant Rana and Trisha were getting together too. Here's an example of the kind of headlines we saw then: 'Is Baahubali star Rana Daggubati back with his ex-girlfriend Trisha Krishnan? Here’s what we know'. It didn't matter that we actually didn't know ANYTHING beyond the tweets, but it was important anyway to keep speculating about Rana's impending marriage.
Most women stars don't marry when they are at the peak of their careers (though this is changing) because it could put an end to their ambitions. However, since marriage isn't considered to be an obstacle for male stars, many of them marry young. It was unacceptable that Rana, who stepped into his 30s five years ago, could continue to remain an outlier. And since he'd become a pan-Indian star after Baahubali, it was only natural that media houses across the country should worry about his marital status and not just the regional media which had already invested a good many years in the subject.
But Rana must not be under the impression that the media is done with speculating about his life. We're sure entertainment bureaus are already writing copies with headlines like, 'Is this where Rana Dagguabati will marry Miheeka Bajaj?', 'Rana and Miheeka's secret destination wedding plans REVEALED'. And after the wedding, there will be scores of reporters whose job it is to find out if Miheeka is pregnant (they're currently busy finding that out about Samantha, but hey, the more the merrier). No, Rana, we aren't done with you yet!
Now that Bhallaladeva has satisfactorily settled down, the focus on Baahubali has intensified. If media reports were remotely true, Prabhas has been getting married every month for the past few years. Sometimes to his co-star Anushka Shetty, sometimes to mysterious women his family has arranged for him, and sometimes to some other famed beauty he met in totally romantic circumstances. That impending marriage is yet to materialise. But let's go back to what director SS Rajamouli said on the same episode of Koffee With Karan about the marriage plans of his two actors - Rana and Prabhas. Calling Prabhas too lazy to get married, Rajamouli predicted that Rana would get married before Prabhas. And he was right! So, now that we know the truth about Rana, does this mean Prabhas's marriage is on the cards?
DOES THIS MEAN BY YEAR END PRABHAS WILL GET MARRIED IN SWITZERLAND? What about Anushka? Let the speculation begin!
PS: If you're reading this and shaking your head at the state of the media, do remember that you clicked on this story because you saw Rana in the headline. We know that you want to know what we think we know. And we play on that.