Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Let's get jolly shall we?

Well I didn't make it out yesterday as it happened - sorry Steven my report on Ice Lounge will have to wait. I ended up trying to console the wailing women of the household - how does one treat the helpers who are upset? I never learnt that at Bankstown Girls, oddly enough! Sometimes this house is like a Bollywood potboiler. And I've seen plenty of them lately.
Good old Bollywood, there's nothing quite like it.  Shah Rukh Khan (or SRK) is one of the big heart throbs - he also owns the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL team -  along with bad boy Salman Khan (who is forever taking his shirt off) who works out about 28 hours a day by the looks of him, Aamir Khan who hadn't been seen for a while and is now back with a vengeance on TV, and Saif Ali Khan who looks quite sweet.
If they aren't for you,  there's Hrithik Roshan who is too dishy for words, and my personal favourite, Akshay Kumar, who started off as a martial arts exponent in Bangkok. He's pretty easy on the eye, and does his own stunts. He frequently appears open shirted or shirtless too. Of course the Big B, Amitabh Bachhan, is probably the best known of all Bollywood stars over the last 30 or so years. His son, Abhishek, is married to the beautiful actress Aishwarya Rai (a former beauty queen). Other screen ladies of note in Bollywood are Preity Zinta (owner of Kings XI Punjab IPL team), the deliciously named Twinkle Khanna (who is married to hunk Akshay Kumar), Twinkle's mother Dimple Kapadia, (where do they get these names?), Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor (aka Bebo). My favourite Bollywood actor name? It has to be the wonderful Chunkey Pandey! OMG.  These people have the most outrageous lifestyles which it seems most self respecting Indians admire and aspire to.
The movie plots are fantastic (in the true sense of the word!) and the hair and costumes have to be seen to be believed. Yesterday I was watching some turgid offering where the good guy (clearly) had the tightest whitest trousers on but still managed to kung fu (well sort of) his way out of a fight against about 20 evil goondas who were trying to beat him up and molest his lady friend. He had the most amazing bouffant hair do too, and just like James Bond, it never got messed up. Ah if only the real world could be so fabulous....
They do sometimes fall from grace, like Sanjay Dutt, a big star in the 80's - he even starred in a Bollywood version of Rocky - and he and I share a birthday (yes the same year too). He was always a bad boy and muscleman, and ended up embroiled in an illegal arms scandal and something in the 1993 Mumbai bombings. Despite this, and several stints in prison, he kept appearing in films and even wanted to run for parliament. Nothing it seems can remove the glamour of Bollywood once it has been appliqued in place!
I'm sure you needed to know all of that, and will be rushing off to your nearest purveyor of Hindi films...
Hey, so Robin rang from Tawang yesterday bored and wet. The gompa was big, the museum not particularly noteworthy, and the Phd student from Assam was not quite up to her Phd yet. Anyway, he was going to head to Bomdilla I think today and then make his way down to Guwahati for our Thursday reunion - key cheesy Bollywood music and person with bouffant hairstyle! Perhaps we can run towards each other through a field of flowers in slow motion or something - then either the fireworks go off or the train enters the tunnel. OOH. If you don't get it don't worry!

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