Desi Galaxy

The terrorist attack on Mumbai has been a devastating savagery after 9/11 and assassination of late Benazir Bhutto. One could not have imagined that something so destroying can happen. It seems that it is unpredictable even for the high authorities in the government to envisage the next step of these wild dogs (terrorists). Who were involved? Whether they belonged to Pakistan or some place else? Whether they had connections in the India-Pakistan government or not? No one knows. What we know is that people in India and Pakistan have been shaken, all are petrified to even step out and so are our beloved Bollywood actors and actresses. As if everything was seized when this slaughtering started and I do not use the word seized regarding films and movies but tongues seized too. Actors and Actresses were traumatized, did not know what to say or how to react.

Amitabh Bachan who had been shooting for his film Teen Patti in Ballard estate in the southern areas of Mumbai, in the district of the CST station describes the situation as ‘Terrible’.

After a few days of silence he writes in his blog.

‘Mumbai under terrorist attack! Several locations bombed and terrorist firing all over the city. Major hotels under seize. Multiple actions on. Army called on. It is a terrible situation.’

Ajay Devgan and his wife Kajol were cancelled off with their shooting of their animation film Toonpur ka superhero because of the circumstances in the city. It was awfully depressing for them. One of their spokesmen said that several TV channels have asked their employees to stay indoors. Shootings are going slow and that most of them are not even happening.

‘The Four Khans’ of the Bollywood industry were also threatened by the little known about ‘Indian Mujahideen outfit’. They have also claimed accountability for the Ahmedabad blasts. This threatening email was received on a Sunday. It said that the Muslim actors should stop acting in films at once or face death.

A lot of famous personalities in the Bollywood industry commented on this letter. Prashant Pandey, writer of Ram Gopal’s “Contract”, an action thriller movie which is said to be uncannily similar to how the Ahmedabad blasts were plotted (A movie being so similar to the reality is indeed a strange coincidence). He said in his statements that it was very unfortunate that actors were being targeted in the name of religion. One of the most hard statements came out of Aziz Mirza, who’s ‘Kismat Konnection’ had just been released, he said that terrorists must be cold shouldered. He says, “The terrorists are stupid guys. You don’t react to them. You just negate them. They can do whatever they want. Nobody listens to mad dogs. Nobody in the industry will give a reaction. Producers, directors, writers etc. were shocked but remained silent and so does Bollywood stays united behind the four Khans.

We all feel exceedingly remorseful for the loss of our beloved actor Ashish Chaudhury’s sister and brother-in-law. Thousands became sad on reading Ashish’s letter which he wrote to break the silence. I personally do not have words, what to write here for Ashish. We can only imagine that what would those two innocent kids (of Ashish’s sister and brother-in-law) be going through. I had always learnt that life is cruel but never adapted it. Now, I realize that the truth is that people in the form of terrorists make life cruel. On one hand I feel sad for Kanishq (12) and Ananaya (7) but on the other hand I want to tell Ashish that they are lucky to be taken care of. I picture those people who have no one, absolutely no one in this world now. I give my sincere condolences and show my sadness to our beloved actor, to all those people who are survivors and to those who have lost and let them know that we are here standing united to support.

Indian Premier League is going to change the cricket, not only in India but everywhere in the world. Though I doubt anyone would be able to get such huge money involved in the game. It is one of those things that can only happen in India. From celebrities, Industrialists and politicians to a common man, every one loves cricket and there is no doubt that it is the most popular sports in world’s second most populous country. Indian Premier League would change the way cricketers thought of glory, fame and money.

Cricket had a reputation of being a gentleman’s game. With the end of colonialization, new cricketing nations appeared on the cricket horizons. At that time it was considered as a threat to the decency and seriousness of Cricket as a sport. But new nations only brought fame, glory and money to Cricket. Now there is so much involved in Twenty20 Indian Premier League that it got ICCI worried. They are worried about match fixing, corruption, and of course their authority on the cricket.

Gary Kirsten newly appointed coach of India’s national cricket team told CricInfo that IPL brings new challenges. He is not interested in joining the new IPL twenty20 era as yet. He said he is more focused on his new assignment of training the Indian Cricket Team.

The world is watching Indian Kissing scandals closely. The world can understand that the public display of affection by kissing hurts Indian feelings. But we have news of complaints filed in Indian courts against the kissing scenes in the movies. Just a few days ago Aishwarya Rai was summoned by the court to explain an “obscene” kissing scene in the movie Dhoom 2.

Christian Science Monitor takes a good look at the Indian sensibilities and the controversy over the Gere-Shetty kissing. In India, a public kiss is not just a kiss is the title of the story. They interviewed people like shopkeepers, college girls and sociologists.

“Courts spend 20 years on rape cases, and here they’ve issued a warrant in weeks,” says Hardeep Singh, sitting behind the counter of his father’s shoe store.

Since Bollywood has taken the lead to break the kissing taboo so it is easily understood why the actors and actresses are becoming victim of public anger. But Bollywood refrains to take part in the debate openly as they have always tried to keep a distance from politically charged controversies. It is not good for their business, I guess. I liked what Dipankar Gupta said while explaining the Indian fury over the kissing scenes in the movies and real life.

“Two very different societies are colliding with each other,” says Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University here. “Because of the Western influence, the changes here are not a natural evolution.”…
….After all, this is the land of the “item girl” – that would-be Bollywood star whose dancing includes everything short of a pole and a wardrobe malfunction. Yet for all her overt sexuality, the temptress is acceptably Indian. The public kiss is not.

Remember we talked (like every body else) about the innocent Richard Gere kissing Shilpa. Well, but a court in India finds it Obscene and has issued arrest warrant for Richard Gere. While talking to Jon Stewart on the Daily show Richard Gere said:

Me kissing the girl on the cheek was nothing. There is a very small right-wing, very conservative political party in India and they are the moral police in India … they do this kind of thing quite often. I do not know of anyone who has gone to jail for something like this.

Shilpa Shetty’s spokesperson Dale Bhagwager told that Shilpa had not received any court order or summons and was currently away visiting temples. He said Shetty had not done anything wrong.

What is there to comment? They were three innocent, natural cute pecks on the cheek. What can one say, when three pecks can be made into an issue in the land of the Kama Sutra? People should concentrate on the bigger issue of Aids, rather than this.

Under the Indian law a person convicted for public obscenity may end serving up to three months in prison, a fine or both.

It has been rumored that Bachchans did not invite a single Muslim colleague or friend to attend the wedding of Abhishek Bachchan. Well they also didn’t invite a whole lot of Hindu, Sikh, Christians but surprisingly there is not even a single Muslim celebrity or politician who attended the Big Bollywood wedding. May be it is just a coincidence but what I have read about the religious activities of the Bachchans and Aishwarya Rai to remove some superstitious astrological curse, makes me believe that they are a religious family. May be they feared that a Muslim attending their pious spiritual Hindu wedding would cause them some astrological harm or would make this marriage unlucky. Or some other stupid super mythological beliefs.

We have read that, Shahrukh Khan was not invited. This guy has worked in many movies with Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan. Hrithik Roshan and Rakesh Roshan were not invited. Because Hrithik’s wife is Muslim. It is rumored that the Bachchans specifically asked Mumbai police not to send any Muslim police officer to provide them security. Private security guards hired by the Bachchans were all Hindus.

Well of course it is none of anyone’s business to discuss the religious beliefs of the Bachchans. I wish that these rumors are not true. But unfortunately it seems like no matter how secular and modern India has become, no matter how people of different religions work closely, there is an integration but when the time comes to show just how integrated different Indian cultures are people prefer to remain secluded in their own religious nutshells.

Poor Richard Gere he didn’t know that kissing someone is such a big issue in India. And kissing someone in public is a horrible act. The controversy sparked when Richard Gere kissed Celebrity Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty during an AIDS HIV awareness rally.

Some Hindu fundamentalist parties hijacked the issue, claiming that Richard’s kissing was vulgar. They organized protests in Mumbai shouting “death to Shilpa Shetty”.

Shilpa Shetty dismissed the public criticism by saying:

What he did was very sweet. It was all in good humour, He especially told me to tell the media that he didn’t want to hurt any Indian sensibilities. I am happy that this has happened because at least now people will talk about the issue of Aids and HIV.

Richard surely didn’t know the sensibilities of macho Indian society where all Indian men want all Indian women for themselves. A Gora kissing their big brother winner is disgusting. However, if the same gora or even if some desi had kissed Shilpa on screen then they would have loved it. Kissing to Indian society is something so special and fantastic that they can not see it happening in real, under broad daylight.

Writing this blog and using the term bollywood over and over again, made me wonder about the term Bollywood. We know that it is B for Bombay replacing the H from Hollywood. But how and when this term got popularity? Who coined it? When it was first used by some well known person.

Obviously I tried Wikipedia first, But Wikipedia’s article about Bollywood doesn’t talk much about the historical background of the term Bollywood itself.

Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindustani language film industry in India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema.

The name is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. Though some purists deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The term Bollywood is so popular that most articles talking about the cultural, social and economical impact of Hindi movies, use the term Bollywood instead of Hindi film industry based in Mumbai. The word is used in almost all entertainment magazines in India and abroad, television, newspapers and even scholarly articles written about Hindi entertainment industry. Do we have some person, individual, publication who owns the credit to introduce this term to Indian popular culture?

Tanya Palta tells us about the origin of the term Bollywood. According to Tanya, Amit Khanna was the person who first used the term Bollywood in mid seventies. Which is not entirely true. In an e-mail to the literary review’s wordspeak Bevinda Collaco claimed that she is the person who first used the term for his gossip column ‘On the Bollywood Beat‘. In her email she wrote:

Bollywood was not by accident. It was very much by design… I got into film journalism by pure accident and knew nothing about Hindi films… I was given a studio beat to do. I was not happy with the name of the column Studio Roundup and thought of `Flipping around Follywood’, but it sounded too harsh. I settled for `On the Bollywood Beat’ instead. From a studio roundup column I began commenting on what was happening off the sets too and it turned into a gossip column. In no time at all the stars were calling up to find out why they were mentioned in Bollywood and others to find out why they were not mentioned in Bollywood. I guess they were responsible for giving my word longevity.

So far there seems an agreement that the term first appeared in a magazine column. We don’t know for sure who first used it Amit or Bevinda but we do know that Bevinda’s column gave the word popularity among the film stars who then started referring the industry as Bollywood. So I think that more credit goes to Bevinda who popularized the term that she claims that she designed to sound different.

Some days back, I talked about a post on Ramesh Jain’s blog. According to Ramesh, Vidhu Vinod Chopra told the audience at the UCLA Campus that he rewards people based on the success of the movie, rather than contracting them. He claimed that this results in allowing him to make movies at reasonable cost. And there are good actors who are willing to work under that model.

Who wouldn’t like to work under that model? Professionals, artists and every day workforce would love to work this way the problem is with the investors, enterprenuers and the big shots. They don’t want to share the monetory success.

Shabana Ansari at DNA has a story about this kind of entrepreneurship. She reports that the actor Rajnikanth is the highest paid actor in India. Rajnikanth has recieved Rs 16 crore as fixed payment for his acting and Rs 9 crore in revenue share.

Reportedly more and more Bollywood actors are following the trend started by the Tamil actor. Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Hrithik Roshan they all now want share in the success of the movies.

But why only limit this model to the actors? Why not include the music composers, choreographers, lyricists, writers, technicians, spot boys, and the chai walas who wander around the studios?

May be it sounds stupid, but this kind of revenue sharing strategy would make artists put their best into a product. This model not only encourages but it also assures the artists that they would get paid for their talent, the producers and distributors would’nt be the only ones enjoying the benefits of money coming along with the success.

And why limit this model of entrepreneurship to Bollywood only? I think it should be widely adapted and professionals should insist on revenue/ profit sharing.

Tags: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, Business, Corporate, Rajnikanth