I have never been a big fan of Jackie Shroff movies. Let it be my Achilles’ heel among umpteen others - I am not a movie nerd and I can not rattle off any other actor’s baskets of movies either: be it from Hollywood, Bollywood or from any other ‘wood’. Nevertheless, for quite a while now, I tend not to channel-hop when I run into a Jackie Shroff movie. I remember the Bollywood actor saying, “may God not give everyone big wealth if He cannot, but may He give everyone good health!” Ever since, I have often cottoned to what he says or does “socially’”as a sensitive person. Health or wealth, a perennial question: all species of living beings - more than twelve million species of them inhabit the planet - prefer the former to the latter. What Shroff said came from his heart naturally and spontaneously. Moreover, what an actor says in real life is more important than how he acts in reel life. He meant it - that’s why it sounded so natural and spontaneous. The remark was pithy, honest and aboveboard. Granted, it’s not necessarily an original statement. That health is more important than wealth is a consensus as old as the hills; a poor person with robust health is in a far more enviable situation than an ailing person with a robust economy. Shroff said it as an actor. That’s another reason why it sounded honest and sincere. Had it been those garrulous gurus or cacophonous politicians, it would have sounded phony. That’s why, understandably, actors often enjoy a bigger and more reliable following of people than religious gurus and untrustworthy politicians do. We see “poor people with good health or poor people with poor health” and “rich people with good health or rich people with poor health”. Being both poor and of poor health, I guess, is the most unenviable of situations. Again, a rich person with poor health may suffer even more with the sick thought of not being able to “utilize” his or her wealth. Delve into more details and life just begins to appear knottier. Alas! It’s just a crazy woolgathering but the perfect world would be the one made of “all-rich-and-all-in-good-health” people. One thing is so unreservedly true: God loves the dereliction of duty. Hence, the onus is on mortal human beings to work conscientiously towards this perfection. Will we ever arrive at it?