Desi Galaxy

It looks like Salman Khan has also started blogging. Its not his personal blog actually the blog is focused on his show “Dus Ka Dum“. There you can read Salman Khan talking about marriage:

Some say that marriage is like Gorilla Warfare… spouses attack each other and hide behind mountains of their pride, prejudice and weakness. They say that observing marriages is what gave ideas of developing Gorilla Warfare techniques. It is said that Marilyn Monroe approached Bernard Shaw for marriage in the hope that their children will have her beauty and his brains. Bernard Shaw declined for fear that the children might end up having his face and her brains! I had a similar fear once about a similar relationship.

I feel that Salman Khan’s blog really has the personal touch. In another post he talks about his charitable foundation “Being Human” and I mean seriously there is this sincerity and genuineness in his writing that you would love to read more. And if text is not enough you can watch Dus Ka Dam videos, pictures from Das ka Dum. I was looking for the pictures of Aamir Khan and Imran Khan. Some of Desi Galaxy readers love to compare Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan and the ultimate comparison of all Shahrukh khan and Amitabh Bachchan. Reading such comments I have started to think like my readers and now when I compare Salman Khan with Shahrukh Khan I think Salman is going up though Shahrukh still is the winner the King Khan. But Salman Khan has totally rebranded himself since his break up with Aishwarya Rai. He is now much more media savvy.

Well I am thinking about an early retirement from the blogging world. I usually blog about desi celebrities and I don’t mind admitting that Desi Galaxy is not very different from other so called bollywood blogs. Now that I have looked at Bombay Bitch, I feel that I am not even the bitch any more.

Bombay Bitch is another Bollywood Entertainment Website. It is not a blog, but it feels a lot like a blog which is good as it allows readers to interact and further add up to the bitching and barking their hearts away. Whats so cool about Bombay Bitch is that it is highly entertaining and maintained by people with a professional attitude towards entertainment. Other than cursing, loathing and admiring the glamour world, the Bombay Bitch tries to keep you entertained with her sardonic sense of humour. In her own words:

The biggest film industry in the world needed a few Bitches to keep it honest. And we ain’ t nothing, if we ain’ t Bitchy. You can call us a gossip rag, or call us snoopy or sneaky or just plain Bitchy, all we have to say to that, is that ‘it takes one to know one’. So read on.. Bitch.

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.

Vimla Patil over at South Asia Women’s Forum asks this question:

Is Bollywood debauchery encouraging adultery in our society?

Vimla is quite confused here. First of all I can not understand why she thinks that the adulterous relationship between Saif and Rosa was the reason behind Saif-Amrita divorce. She claims to know it all, she knows that Aamir Khan’s marriage ended because he was committing adultery with Kiran Rao and Akshay Kumar has adulterous linkages with Kangana Ranaut. I feel that the main reason behind the tragic endings of celebrity marriages is work environment, jealousy and negative press. Adultery is probably the most common reason behind broken marriages all over the world, not just Bollywood. But there are many things behind the news headlines that we people don’t know about these celebrities. We don’t know about their domestic lives.

I don’t know what Vimla thinks about Bollywood, but I think that Bollywood is just a popular name for Indian film industry. You can not say that Bollywood is encouraging adultery. It is just a coincidence that these men work there. She begins her article by quoting Billy Crystal saying, “Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place!”.

The adultry was there in Indian culture, even before Bollywood. I agree that movies have a potential to influence popular culture. But I don’t think that movies can change people’s nature. It is Men’s nature to lust, they would go for it even if Bollywood discourages them. There are many couples who work in entertainment industry and are happily married since years. Why look further, we have examples of Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bahduri, Shahrukh Khan and Gauri, Neetu Singh and Rishi Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan and Suzzane Khan. They are all living like normal couples. But blaming Bollywood for something that is already so common every where is totally baseless.

A whole lot of people visit this website in search of MMS Clips of Indian actress, school and college girls. Shot by mobile camera phones, these mms clips are available on internet on several sites for download. Sometimes these clips alledgly show school and college girls, house wives, working women from different Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Jamshedpur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, etc. There are also MMS clips of Mallika Sherawat, Preity Zinta, Kareena Kapoor, Riya Sen, Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai and Sania Mirza.

Most mms clips featuring Indian actress or models are fake. Like there is an MMS clip showing some model who looks like Preity Zinta taking shower nude. The model in this clip doesn’t really look like Preity Zinta but still someone took advantage of the buzz. But also there are some real MMS clips like kareena-shahid MMS clip showing the couple kissing each other or Ashmit Patel and Riya Sen MMS clip. Riya Sen blamed Ashmit Patel for leaking the clip out.

These MMS clips has sparked the debate to combat cyber crimes in India. The girls shown in such clips are usually unaware that they are getting filmed by someone. Like recently, a police complain filed by Hetal Gandhi, a resident of Srinath Society of Kalol about an objectionable MMS clip of her was allegedly filmed and circulated. The girl said that the MMS clip, which showed her nude, affected her marriage. Gandhi claimed that the MMS clip was shot against her consent and was used to blackmail her.

In the Indian State of Jharkand, the police has sent a request to local government for setting up a special cell to combat hi-tech and cyber crimes. The State government refused the proposal. Nearly six months ago an MMS scandal rocked the Regional Institute of Technology in Namokom, Ranchi. Two boys allegedly prepared a three-minute MMS clip of a girl and circulated it among students. But the police failed to act due to manpower shortage.

It all started with the DPS MMS clip which showed a DPS RK Puram school girl in 3gp format video clip. Some one on eBay provided the dps mms download for a fee. People downloaded this video clip and circulated it around and soon the “dps dhamaka” video clip was on every teenager’s computer and mobile phones. The debate on media and the pressure on local authorities to curb down on such scandals resulted into further popularity of these videos. Now the net is flooded with adult video clips of desi girls. There is no evidence whether these Girls are models or regular girls who didn’t know that these clips would be circulated around this way.

MMS clips also sparked a trend of videos clips showing wadrobe malfunctions during Lakme India Fashion weak. The video clips of Carol Gracias, Gauhar Khan and Nigar Khan are also in circulation as MMS clips and also available on the internet.

[You think you know all about Bollywood? We invite you to Desi Galaxy's Bollywood Challenge. A weekly quiz where you can test your knowledge about Hindi movies.]

Check out Salman Khan talking about his passion, love life, God and upcoming projects. Remember Salman Khan is not an easy to get interviewed celebrity he has had troubles with media in the past so he usually avoids media.

India Times followed and has recently interviewed Salman Khan. I hate India Times website but I love Salman Khan.

In other Salman related news, Hrithik Roshan has made an on screen joke about Salman Khan and Aamir Khan while answering rapidfire questions at Koffee with Karan.

Also check out Salman Online a fansite dedicated to Salman Khan. It has lots of photos, images, wallpapers, shirtless pictures, and videos of Salman Khan. I loved their Saltoons section.

Please Click To Enlarge Images:

Since the announcement that Shahrukh Khan will host KBC (Kaun Banega Crorpati), every one is comparing him with the previous host of the show, Amitabh Bachchan. Shahrukh Khan has previously done a remake of Amitabh Bachchan’s classic movie Don and has faced the similar situation where he was compared with the legendary Bachchan and every one talked about who is the better Don. Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan both has admitted publicly about the rivalry among the two living legends of Indian show business. However, the rivalry is purely at the professional level and both stars consider it a healthy excersice to improve on their already perfect entertaining skills.

But comparing the two is the talk of the nation and Hindustan times came up with the report that Shahrukh didn’t recieve as much viewership as Amitabh. Soon, the Star India spokesman trashed Hidustan time’s report and their figures by telling that their figures reveal exactly the opposite and prove that Shahrukh is more popular among the viewers.

IndianTelevision.com has a nice report, with charts and figures that also prove Shahrukh Khan’s charisma bringing more viewership to the show.

There are rumors about the tension between Rani Mukherjee and Manish Malhotra. Media got the wind of it when they found that instead of Manish, Sabyasachi Mukherjee will be designing her clothes for the upcoming movie Baabul. Sabyasachi also worked with Rani in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s critically acclaimed movie ‘Black’. So it is not the first time Rani’s not working with Manish. Media is pretty good at making stories out of nothing. This story is a classic example of creating a clickable or readable news story.

For example they totally ignore the fact that Baabul is not the first movie where Rani is not wearing costumes designed by Manish. They also totally ignore the reality that Rani Mukherjee and Manish Malhotra are both professionals, they need creative freedom to present their work. I think such loyalties are good in a way that these combinations create a genre of their own. Just look at the movies where Rani and Manish worked together and Rani looked beautiful, fresh and stylish wearing all those nice costumes. Bounding in loyalties would affect the audience mostly as they wont be seeing other combinations and other styles. Stylizing characters in movies is totally different from what we see in fashion shows. The characters in movies are going to act freely, and in Indian movies they often get over excited and emotional on little things. Actors are not models you can dress them but it would work magic only if it works out well with rest of the ingredients.

Lets see how Sabyasachi presents Rani in Baabul, what I have gathered from the web it seems that he is quite good at Birdal Saarees. So may be they have some heavily embroided Wedding costumes for Rani in Baabul. Now the question that comes to my mind is that wether Sabyasachi Mukherjee would be able to deliver something as stunning as Kajol’s bridal lehnga in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai?

Links:
Sabyasachi’s work in Lakme India Fashion Week 2004