India Masala

from India Insight:

Bollywood stars kick up a fuss with real-life rumpus

Pow! Biff! Bang! Dishoom! Real life action by Bollywood celebrities has caught the nation’s eyeballs. Shah Rukh Khan was accused of roughing up Shirish Kunder some days ago and made ripples as he brought the media’s gaze from corruption scams and the election circus to the one thing that never fails to draw attention -- a spicy brawl.

Now, Saif Ali Khan diverts attention from Vijay Mallya’s king-size woes for beating up a certain businessman in Mumbai’s Taj hotel. Saif was booked for assault, arrested and later bailed -- insisting that he was only defending himself.

Salman Khan has lost his temper on many occasions, and so have many others from Bollywood. Shah Rukh and Salman engaged in a verbal duel some years ago, and it would have ended ugly had Shah Rukh’s wife Gauri and Salman’s then girlfriend Katrina Kaif not intervened.

The latest incident comes a month before Saif Ali Khan’s spy thriller “Agent Vinod” is set to release. Therefore, we are pushed to wonder -- publicity or aggression? Or could these public spats be attributed to a heady mix of fame, power and alcohol?

It is acceptable in a movie for the hero to rough up the bad guys. The audience savours the good guy's vengeance. But these men are not superheroes in their real-life avatars, and are bound by the law. Justice will take its course, but in the mean time, the nation’s politicians should be grateful their real-life foibles are pushed down the front page.

from Left field:

ICC name best test team of all time. Right or wrong?

The ICC has unveiled the best test team of all time as voted for by fans on the governing body's website. The ICC offered a shortlist to choose from.

Here it is:

Virender Sehwag

Sunil Gavaskar

Donald Bradman

Sachin Tendulkar

Brian Lara

India takes cue from Pakistan as Coke Studio crosses border

By Annie Banerji

Usually known to adapt shows from the west like American Idol, The X Factor and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, India is set to start Coke Studio @ MTV, a rendering of Coke Studio Pakistan, which is currently airing its fourth season. It seems the two initialised an exchange of television programmes last year when MTV Pakistan asked the Indian counterpart for the licence to produce Roadies, an Indian home grown reality show.

Coke Studio, which originated in Brazil in 2007, welcomes and celebrates the diversity in unity in the genres of music, wherein the artists collaborate to offer a plethora of cultural and diverse influences ranging from classical, Sufi, folk to contemporary, pop and even bhangra (a type of music combining Punjabi folk traditions with Western pop).

Similarities between Coke Studio @ MTV, the official name of the show, and its Pakistani version may be drawn due to both countries’ historical and cultural nexus in Punjabi and Sufi music. In spite of this, having hundreds of languages across the nation, the show’s Indian adaptation hopes to reach the next level by showcasing a myriad of multi-lingual musical collaborations.

“Music is what feelings sound like,” reads the official Facebook page of Coke Studio @ MTV. The anticipation of the launch is palpable through social media. The yet-to-be aired Coke Studio @ MTV Facebook page already has over 200,000 fans and sneak peeks on YouTube have been viewed over a few thousand times.

It appears that the root to the rising anticipation of the show is its move away from exclusively highlighting commercial Bollywood music, which most Indian music-related programmes tend to do. The audience is looking forward to the assortment of talent from different corners of the country, all under one banner.

Unlike every other show in India, this programme is neither a competition nor any form of a reality show. Its main objective is to design a platform for popular musicians as well as upcoming talent to come together in order to create a fusion with their individual musical tastes and to finally record the product on the spot.

from Photographers Blog:

Left teary-eyed after an onion attack

Onions have been a very important part of Indian history. Governments have fallen here over the price of onions. So last week when our commodities correspondent Rajendra Jadhav suggested a story on the skyrocketing prices of vegetables, onions seemed the natural peg. The idea was to do something simple around the price of a vegetable as it changes from the field to the dinner table. Our destination was the wholesale onion market in Nashik, Maharashtra, one of the highest producers of onions in the country. Nothing had prepared us for what we were about to encounter.

On Monday, prices of onions nose-dived over a ban on exports by the government and the arrival of new stock through imports. Unaware of this, we went to the onion market in Lasalgaon.

Upon reaching the location, both Rajendra and I got busy. I photographed the way onions were being loaded on small tractors. We then moved to the other side of the market where the auction was to take place. But here something unexpected happened - we were greeted by angry farmers who accused us, the media, of pushing prices down; we were the only two there at the time.

Their anger was such, we instantly shelved our plans of taking pictures and started walking back towards our car. But from then on, it all went awry.

The crowd turned hostile and started throwing onions at me. They were yelling and screaming. A stone was hurled at me. I started running towards the car, shouting at my driver to open the door. I got in but my driver was too nervous to stay inside the car. So as luck would have it, a mob surrounded my car and my driver was nowhere to be seen. I tried to stay as calm as I could.

WIFW 2010: HIGHLIGHTS – Varun Sardana

Highlights from the Varun Sardana collection at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week 2010 in New Delhi.

WIFW 2010: HIGHLIGHTS – Rajesh Pratap Singh

Highlights from the Rajesh Pratap Singh collection at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week 2010 in New Delhi.

Fashion diary – clothes, controversies and a finale that wasn’t

Fashion consciousness has grown in a big way in the last 3-4 years, a fashion analyst told me. And judging by the crowds that throng the week-long Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, it would seem that most middle class citizens, given a chance (or a day pass) want to have a piece of the fashion fraternity tag on their chest, whether they have any clue about couture or not.

The question of affordability or even wearability of the sometimes outlandish designs for the common man on Indian streets is another question.

And what would a big event in the Indian capital be without a good dose of controversy to go along with the catwalks.  All shows on the first day were suddenly cancelled due to the absence of mandatory fire safety permits even as models were dressing up backstage and guests were lining up outside the hall.

The need to accommodate the cancelled shows resulted in the addition of an extra day, and a new fashion phrase – The Grand Fashion Day.

The sixth day may be the Grand Fashion Day, but it was not grand enough for fashion label Satya Paul, which pulled out of the event.

And designer Rajesh Pratap Singh, who was bestowed with the honour of the Grand Finale show, had to oddly showcase his collection on the penultimate day with the “Grand Finale” tag intact and the ceremonial last-day-last-show drinks being served to guests outside the show area.

The Rajasthan-born designer made the unconventional choice of showing his “Bespoke Tales” collection without any star showstopper, unlike most others who try and make the final show as exciting as possible for the media.

WIFW 2010: HIGHLIGHTS – Nandita Basu

Highlights from the Nandita Basu collection at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week 2010 in New Delhi.

WIFW 2010: First day a no-show

Shows on the first day of India’s biggest fashion event were cancelled on Wednesday after organisers of the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week could not furnish mandatory fire safety permits.

(Flip cam video by Urvashi Sibal)

Has Bollywood run out of heroes?

At the ongoing FICCI Frames conference, during a very engaging debate on scripts in Indian cinema, writer Javed Akhtar came up with an interesting observation.

He said Bollywood had run out of heroes and therefore run out of villains as well, because contemporary Indian society had run out of morality.

“You cannot have great stories without great characters and you cannot have great characters without clear-cut morality and aspiration,” Akhtar who has co-written some of Hindi cinema’s classics, said at the debate.

He also recounted the villains down the years in Hindi cinema. In the 50s, it was the landowner, in the 60s the factory owner, the 70s saw the underworld gangster as the villain and later as the hero while the policeman became the villain.

“Now we have run out of heroes and therefore villains as well,” Akhtar said.

Do you agree? Can you think of a ‘hero’ in recent times?