CrazyKiya Re....or Heroes I'd write Letters in Blood to

What would you say are the chances of women writing thousands of these letters to a short, stubby man with pimples and a haircut that looks as if it is from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon?

My point is this. We ladies are a picky lot. After all, there’s blood involved here. So, you may be the greatest superstar, an acting legend; your films may have raked in gadzillions, declared as immortal classics, your waxwork might be rubbing bottoms with Cary Grant’s at Madame Tussauds. But if you don’t make our hearts (and other regions too) throb, go boompity-boom and dhak-dhak, if the knees ain’t turning to delicious moony mush, if you don’t start a conflagration in our sweet, womanly jigars that would light a million beedis, if there isn’t a sudden and insane urge to rush into our boudoirs (yes, we all have one) and slip into something more comfortable at the mere sight of you, then sirjee, we ain’t wasting a drop - forget blood, not even drool.

Also, beefcake palls after the first two nibbles…

Now I’m not one of these khoon-bhari-khat (KBK) types.
(For one, e-mail doesn’t fell any trees. For another, I can’t stand the sight of blood.)
But if I were, there is only one man to top my list.
Vinod Khanna.
Even now, pushing sixty-two, on the wrong side of burly, thinning hair et al. They say that if he hadn’t suddenly taken “sanyas” in 1982 at the peak of his success, Amitabh Bachchan would’ve had serious competition for the post of Uberstar. Well, I for one am glad he did because otherwise, I’d be writing so many of dem damn letters - all the way from Reshma Aur Shera to Leela and Risk - that I’d have needed blood transfusions by now…

And his most gasp-‘n-reach-for-my-khoon-bhari-pen moment?

Well, I’m going to skip the obvious one - which is the kissing scene in Dayavan because according to me, there’s almost no one who can fill a uniform quite so, er shall we say, satisfactorily as Vinod Khanna. (I take a moment to compose myself and wait for knees to solidify.) So, for me, it’s Achanak (the entire film) and of course, the scene in Amar Akbar Anthony when he and Amitabh Bachchan meet for the first time. When Khanna starts unbuttoning his shirt and growls, “Dekhte hai tum main kitna dum!“? …..

Oh my goodness gracious me.
(I take 5 minutes to compose myself.) Did I say “uniform”? Make that dhoti, lungi, shorts jeans, tuxedo, bath towel, bandit jewellery, shorts, Rupa baniyan…. Oh, the heck with it. The man would make lace garters look like regulation jock wear. Not to mention orange caftans with rudraksh malas. On any other man - even Vincent Chase - you’ll bust your boob job laughing. On Vinod Khanna? I need a whole week off to compose myself…..
(Vinod Khanna’s other KBK films - Mere Apne, Hera Pheri, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Shaque, Rihaee and Imthihan)

And coming a very close second to the Sexy Sanyasi (thank you Devyani, for this and so many other delightful handles) is Jackie Shroff.
Even now; fifty, silly pudding-basin hair-weave et al.
And I don’t care how many of you jeered, “wooden! Wooden!”. And it’s not what you are thinking though how many men do we know who can make a bandhini dupatta look as macho as …well, as Vinod Khanna in an orange caftan?
You see, it’s like those liqueur filled chocs. What separates mere beefcake from a prime cut of KBK is a soft, delicious, heady centre that makes every woman feel that she is this maddeningly irresistible goddess-sex-kitten-houri….. and reach feverishly for her trusty blood-dipped-nib. And we always know. With just one bite…er, I mean one look into the fella’s eyes and by the feeling of a 60-piece orchestra playing somewhere our nether lumbar regions.
And our Jaggu Dada has that stuff by bucketfuls. Just watch him in Parinda, Gardish, Aina, Kaash, Saudagar (to name only a few) and even as the utterly ch-se-chunky-hunky “Chunnilal” in Devdas, even though he ch-se-hammed it to the hilt.
But the highest point of our Shroff‘s KBT-ness was (and is) as the swoon-a-licious “Raj Kamal” in Rangeela and what on earth was that Urmila thinking?! I mean, Aamir was cute but if I wanted cute, I’d get myself a Care Bear.
That’s just Jackie on screen. Off screen? The man should ring a warning bell or something five minutes before walking into the room. Because when he does, there isn‘t be a dry female ...er saliva gland inside a 10 mile-radius.
Sigh.
Now I know I said “list”, but I’ll have to stop here because after Vinod Khanna and Jackie Shroff, I‘m almost clean out of blood and what’s left I have to save for the man who really did get KBK’s by the sackfuls. Sada Jatin-Kaka a.k.a Rajesh Khanna. Pimply, yes. Stubby, short body, yes. Haircut from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon, most definitely. Guru kurtas, retch-yetch-yes. But the eyes, oh the eyes. Look into them and you feel you are drowning into a tub…no make that a jacuzzi full of that soft, delicious, heady stuff that makes you feel that you are this maddeningly…..you get my drift. Baharon ke Sapne, Aradhana, Khamoshi, Kati Patang, Amar Prem, Mere Jeevan Saathi, Daag, Aap ki Kasam, …. so please don’t ask me to pick the most KBK of this lot because ….
Oh wait a minute.
There is one - Aavishkaar. For weeks, nay months afterwards, there was nothing I wanted more than be “Mansi”, married to “Amar” and live in a house outside which a lamp glowed this message of conjugal bliss - “Ghar Mansi Amar ka”.
And I can’t think why I didn’t dash off a KBT…

Yusuf Khan, Devika Rani and the matter of a name

It was Devika Rani who gave the man who become one of Indian Cinena's greatest actors. She cast him in the film Jwar Bhata in 1944. His name was Yusuf Khan but Devika Rani wanted him to chnge his name and offered him 3 choices:-
Jahangir
Vasudev
Dilip Kumar
The rest is history

Bicycle and Other Thieves

"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder." ~Alfred Hitchcock

The idea of Do Bigha Zameen came to Bimal Roy, they say, when he was sitting at the top of a double-decker bus on his way home from a screening of Vittorio De Sica’s classic, Bicycle Thief, based novel by Luigi Bartolini. And that was 56 years ago.
Everyone’s got their knickers in such a twist about a supposed trend in Hindi films to go back to literature for story ideas. Look at Parineeta and Devdas and Maqbool and Paheli and Sarkar and 1918 Banaras A Love Story and ……they reel off breathlessly. (If you don’t know which novels those films were based on, you don’t need to read this article anyway!) And now Vishal Bharadwaj is bringing up the rear by the second of his Shakespeare based trilogy with Omkara, which is based on Othello. And “inspired” by aapro Sanjay, there are a whole rash of remakes threatening to crop up. Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam and Umrao Jaan and what not. Everyone’s in such a tizzy, such a dither, such a lather. Why, oh, why, they agonize, wringing their hands worriedly and knitting their brows into a fine Fair Isle, is this happening? Is this because there are very few original scriptwriters around in the Hindi film industry? (How many were there in the first place, is my naive question.) Is it because there is a paucity of ideas? (Was there ever a plethora, I timidly suggest.) Though no one has yet asked perhaps what is the more pertinent question - are the video libraries on strike and so everyone running low on their supply of Hollywood films to…er, be inspired by?
Never mind. But even if it is indeed true that droves of directors in apun ka Hindi phillum industry are enthusiastically diving into their Complete Works of Munshi Premchand and blowing the dust off their Remaker’s Guide to Sarat Chandra (who else) and de-cob webbing their How-to-narrate-Shakespeare-in-One-Liners (would Ram Teri Ganga Gayi be a good title for a “remake” of Romeo and Juliet, I wonder), it might put things a little into perspective if we remember how it all began …..

On 21st April 1913, India’s first full-length feature film, Dada Saheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra was commercially screened. Phalke’s subsequent films – totally around 100 in number - were films like Mohini Bhasmasur, Satyavan Savitri, Shri Krishna Janam, Bhakt Prahlad and India’s first box office hit, Lanka Dahan. Baburao Painter's first film in 1920 was Sairandhri (one of Draupadi’s names) and his subsequent films were Sati Padmini, Shri Krishna Avtaar, Vatsalaharan, Surekha Haran etc. The first South Indian feature film was R. Nataraja Mudaliar's Gopal Krishna. The first Marathi film – and a huge hit – was V. Shantaram’s Ayodhyacha Raja and the first Oriya film was Sita Bibaha. And so on and so forth.
Yeah, yeah, we know all this, but what’s my point? Just this. It’s plain as pie that the first 15-20 years of Indian cinema happily and voraciously fed off two of the world’s greatest pieces of literature, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Even when Indian filmmakers found their filmmaking legs and looked for other story sources, the obvious choice was the vast and rich treasury of Indian literature, both ancient and modern. Baburao Painter's 1925 classic, Savkari Pash (in which V. Shantaram made his debut as an actor) was a film adaptation of the novel written by the man who is considred the founder of the modern Marathi novel - Hari Narayan Apte.

And almost 20 years after Raja Harishchnadra, when Ardeshir Irani made India’s first talkie, Alam Ara, in 1931, it was based on a Parsi play written by Joseph David. In 1937, V. Shantaram took another of Apte’s novels, Na Patnari Ghosta and made into not one but two masterpieces – first in Marathi as Kunku and then as Duniya Na Mane in Hindi, both in 1937. His Shakuntala in 1943, based on Kalidasa’s great play, ran for an incredible 104 weeks Apart from Sikander, Sohrab Modi’s and Prithviraj Kapoor’s other great collaboration, Prithvi Vallabh also in 1943 was based on Kanhayalal M. Munshi’s Gujarati novel by the same name. And of course, there was Vijay Bhatt’s Ram Rajya (1947).
And this trend to look to literature for stories continued. If you look at the 13 most memorable films that Bimal Roy made between 1945 and 1963, as many as 5 were born of Bengali literature – Bandini (based on Bengali writer Jarasandha’s novel, Tamasi), Kabuliwala (based on Tagore’s short story which Roy produced), Parineeta and Biraj Bahu, both based on novels by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee. I know. That adds up to only 4 but before I mention the 5th, I have to talk about dear ol’ Sarat. From the looks of it, he was Indian cinema’s most popular source for stories. And 68 years after his death, it seems that he still is! At least 41 films have been made of his novels and short stories. And among the more well-know - apart from Bimal Roy’s Parineeta and Biraj Bahu - are P. C. Barua’s Manzil, K L Saigal’s hit film, Pujarin in which he sang the ultimate tipplers’ anthem, Piye ja aur piye ja, said to be the only film song in Indian cinema that was recorded without any rehearsal or any set music! Then in more recent times, Basu Chatterjee’s Swami (1977) and Gulzar’s Khusboo (1975).
Am I not going to mention Devdas, at all, you ask, outraged?
Oh alright then. And Devdas. Which is the 5th Bimal Roy film based on Bengali literature. Since the novel was published 89 years ago (a full 16 years after Sarat Chandra wrote it!), it has been made into film at least 9 times, twice in Telugu including the super hit Devadasu, starring the superstar Akkeni Nageshwara Rao, which was made 2 years before Bimal Roy’s 1953 version. And a Tamil version of P C Barua’s Devdas was released simultaneously in which Saigal sang 2 songs….in Tamil!
So, in the almost hundred-year history of Indian cinema, Indian literature always fired the imagination of our filmmakers, resulting in some of our finest films – Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi (based on Mushi Premchand’s novel), Vijay Anand’s Guide (R. K. Narayanan), Basu Bhattacharya’s Teersi Kasam (Phaneshwarnath Renu), Abrar Alvi’s Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam (Bimal Mitra), M. S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (Ismat Chugtai) just to name a few. And that’s not something unique about Indian cinema, but also a world wide phenomenon. From the Bible to Ernest Hemingway, from William Shakespeare to William Faulkner, from Charles Dickens to Arthur Miller, from Agatha Christie to Ian Fleming, all inspired both classics and blockbuster hits. And just look at some of the Oscars winners of the last 3 years - Brokeback Mountain, Million Dollar Baby, Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, A Beautiful Mind. They all came out of short stories and novels.
And it is only but natural. Story telling is as old as man himself, not just an art form, but an instinct as primeval and compelling as hunger because in our stories, we record the history of our souls and our hearts. And cinema, storytelling’s youngest, most beguiling, most enchanting child has always looked to its elder sibling for inspiration,
So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that we are going back to books? Well, I’d say it’s a good because it means that our filmmakers are finally beginning to read. But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what a great film comes out of. The heart of great storytelling whether that’s around the fire, on your grandmother’s lap or in 70 mm technicolour is a cracking good story. Stuff that widens your eyes with wonder and shine with delight, makes your heart sigh and sing, makes you cry and laugh; stuff that transports you out of yourself to back inside again. And most importantly, that rivets you, involves you so completely that you forget everything but the burning question, “Phir kya hua?” And that magic could come out of a great piece of literature or a little news item tucked away in yesterday’s newspaper. “Woman with cellphone steals new born baby from maternity ward…”
Willa Cather, the great American novelist once famously said, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” And that would roughly sum up the task of any filmmaker – to take a story and tell it as magically if it has never been told before. Be that Devdas. Or Biwi No. 1.
[Hindi+Movies]
******
Did you know…
That the 1938 Tamil film that launched M. S. Subbulakshmi to cinematic fame was "Seva Sadanam,", was based on a Munshi Premchand's very first novel, Seva Sadan?
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k248/rajaiah/pear1.gif

Where have all the Sadhana cuts gone?

“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Andy Warhol
It was a chocolate-coloured saree with a yellow border and it had little yellow flowers (ambis, perhaps?) the colour of haldi scattered all over. The girl was all of 12 years old, but she had to have the saree, because at the time, it was all the rage. That was 53 years ago, but my mother still remembers her “Chandralekha” saree, so christened after S. S. Vassan’s historic Tamil hit film starring T. R. Rajakumari (T. R. standing for the grand sobriquet of Thanjavur Ranganayiki) who, I guess, must have worn such a saree in the film.
Thirteen years later, in 1961, in the Hindi movie Hum Dono, Sadhana’s hairstyle, (characterized by a sweetly wispy fringe over her forehead,) caught the imagination of the nation like wildfire and was immortalized as the 'Sadhana Cut'. And so it was, not so long ago, when movies were the magic that not just coloured our dreams but shaped the way we looked. It was in the cinema theatre where we found our earthly gods and goddesses, mesmerized not just by power of their performances, but by the way they made that hipster sari perch so saucily on those hips (Mumtaz in Brahmachari) or that curl kiss that magnolia forehead so tenderly (Meena Kumari in Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam). Whether your pallu regally swept the floor or sat like a perky little napkin on your shoulder, whether your choli sleeve crept demurely came all the way to your elbow (Waheeda Rehman in Guide) or boldly went where no choli sleeve had ever dared to go all depended on the heroines’ whims. Silsila may not have done well at the box office, but Rekha’s cholis with their now famous “magyar” sleeves (a kind of a compromise struck, I suspect, between modesty and titillation) became a huge hit.
And I remember the start of a lengthy battle of wills with my mother when I first tweezed my eyebrows to the fashionably pencil-thin line that Zeenie baby was sporting that year. They look like lines of black ants crawling across your forehead, my mother sneered despairingly, the pressures of disciplining a teenage daughter with delusions of passing off as Zeenat Aman’s twin (only about 8” shorter and twenty pounds heavier!) having temporarily deleted the Chandralekha saree from her head. But I had only just begun. Fortunately for Mummy the tight, sleeveless churidar-kurtas (with the coquettish little slit at the back so that you could at least totter around without keeling over) pioneered by Vyjanthimala, Asha Parekh and Sadhana in films like 'Jewel Thief' and 'Love in Tokyo', the “frosted” lipsticks that made those of us not blessed with the peaches-‘n-cream look like grey ghosts who had just taken their lips out of the freezer, the stretch pants made for limbs far less khaatey-peetey that our Bharatiya Nari ones, the towering, back-combed, stiffly sprayed edifices called the bouffants had long since passed – with honours, I must add – into cinematic history.
But no matter, the deities had new avatars for me. My kurtas climbed thigh-high, my pants flared to elephant. I secretly used poster paint to draw “eyeliner” on my eyelids (when my mum discovered this, she lived in the constant terror that I’d go blind!), my “tops” shrunk to something that looked like the tailor had tried to squeeze out of a handkerchief (Neetu Singh ala Kabhie Kabhie, Khel Khel Mein), I maxi-ed and midi-ed (having missed the mini era, thank God!), and when Jaya Bhaduri cut two front locks of her beautiful knee- length hair to hang loose on either side of her face, I followed faithfully. I still remember the early morning ritual before school – my mother would try to tame the offending locks with oil and I would then promptly rush to the bathroom and lovingly shampoo just the two of them, my two flags of defiance, fashionably un-oiled, ready to be whipped out and tossed around as the emotion of the moment demanded!
And it was not just the women. Dilip Kumar’s Devdas made unrequited love a national pastime where droves of besotted young men rushed to pine away with the help of a consumptive cough and a bottle of that in which sorrows drowned. Naturally, it was mandatory to wear correct the Devdas hairstyle – your front locks scattered despairingly all over your forehead. Then came Dev Anand’s dangly limbs and dashing puff, (which he started to sport, so the story goes, because his then lady love Suriya was a fan of Gregory Peck who had a similar hairstyle). Nothing, not even the windiest wind-machine would flatten it till Devsaab himself did, in Johnny Mera Naam. And then there was the “Bachchan” cut with which millions of nais across the country shaped the hair of their smitten clientele, who then ripped open their shirts to display pelts of surly chest hair, knotted the rest of the shirt around their waist ( Deewar), and bowed at the altar of the Angry Young Man. In between of course there was Rajesh Khanna, whose one Noddy nod, one slow-motion squeeze of the eyelids, one smile that spread like melted chocolate across his lips, (who can forget the soft, slurrily drawled, “Pushpa, I hate tears!” in Amar Prem?!) sent all of Indian womanhood into an ecstatic swoon only to recover enough to propose to him in blood. (When he married Dimple Kapadia, it was almost a national mourning.) Nobody seemed to notice that this dream devta had pimples, an oddly shaped shaped body and an even odder taste in clothes like his guru kurtas in 'Anand' (1972) and his habit of wearing a belt with a kurta (Andaz' - 1971).
So what happened? Where did they all go? Why is it that we don’t have an “Aishwarya cut” or Karishma kurta? How come no one rushed out to copy Shahrukh Khan’s jeans in “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai” or Hrithik Roshan’s black net reveal-all t-shirt in Kaho Na Pyar Hai? Is it because so much of what our stars wear today and the way they look ape a kind of desi version of the designer West, too alien for the average Indian person? (And how else would they lure, the fillum producers ask, the huge NRI market?) Maybe but that sounds like too pat, too superficial an explanation. Maybe it is a sign of our times – where everything is instant, disposable – like paper cups, where superstars are made every Friday night… and die the next Friday. Maybe it’s because our cine gods came down from heaven – through the media and publicity blitzes that blew away the stardust and revealed that they were just people like you and me, only better made up.
Or maybe it’s because increasingly we are a generation bereft of heroes and untutored in the habit of hero worship. Look around you and the place is littered with debris of the fallen angels of public life. Some of us may shrug our shoulders and say, aw, what the heck, we can do with some empty space on our altars already crowded with too many gods. But the thing is, hero worship is like dreaming. It’s good for the soul - a bit like airing your cupboard. It keeps at bay the cobwebs that congeal us into the ho-hum and the ordinary. Dreams and heroes keeps us yearning for to hitch our wagons to that star, no matter how dimly distant it may seem. I for one miss being starry-eyed. It used to make the world so much more palatable. After a long, hard day’s of humdrum, it would’ve been so good to shut one’s eyes and dream of being a doe-eyed beauty, tenderly romanced by a Dev Anand look alike, his puff lit by the smoky glow of lighter which tinkled “Abhi na jaao chhod kar, key dil abhi bhara nahi”. Except that there are no Sadhana cuts anymore to arrange on my forehead anymore……
“But look, look now, look at my hairstyle, this neat cut, people call it the Sadhana cut…..I have given them (the poor) a sense of self-respect. Nobody can stop them. They can now comb their hair the way the want, like me.” Laloo Prasad Yadav in “The making of Bihar” by Sankarshan Thakur

The English Hindi Film Industry in India

The Filmfare Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood

By Ratna Rajaiah

No, I am not hallucinating, just doing a bit of " I-told-you-so." They should have had the Filmfare Awards function in the Kodak theatre instead of that boring old Bandra-Kurla Complex. I told you so. So, who did I tell? More importantly, did anyone ask me? The Filmfare Awards organizing committee? Nope. Pradeep Guha? Nope. Cyrus Bharucha? Nope. His mum? Nope. Sony Television? Nope. Amar Singh? Nope. Sanjay Leela Bhansali? Nope. Okay, then Leela ben Bhansali, who should know a thing or two about these awards nights, having accompanied her dikhra all the way from Cannes to Cannanore to help him bag and cart the kilofuls of awards that he has been receiving of late. Nope, she didn’t either.
(They have a film awards function in Cannanore? No, but it rhymes with Cannes so nicely, na.)
So, nobody asked me. But I offered my two-paisa bit anyway and here it is again.
The Filmfare awards should have happened at the Kodak theatre in Hollywood.

Isn't anyone going to ask me why?

Oh alright, if you insist…. Why?

Very simple. It's only by pure chance, perhaps some awful aberration, ghastly slip-up or hideous mishap that these days films get made in Hindi, because of which we are still called the Hindi film industry. Because, if truth be told, as far as we are concerned, it’s like this. Heaven, Hollywood - same thing. Everyone’s dearest wish - apart from being seen flashing our latest Abu-Jani in at least one 2-second shot of the Oscars Awards telecast - is that when we die, we get to spend the rest of eternity where we pined to be all our mortal lives. Hollywood. Rubbing scripts with Spielberg, swapping camera angles with Ang Lee, making sheep’s eyes at George Clooney. (Or Charliez Theron, depending on which side of the Brokeback you are on) And jotting down points for our Oscar acceptance speech, not to mention checking out the best red carpet outfit designers.
Till then, we bide our time in boring ol’ Bollywood. (Though since Bombay is now Mumbai, so maybe that should be ‘Mollywood’.) Concentrating on getting ready for our soon-to-be Hollywoodness. Which means making what are ostensibly Hindi films, but if you watch and listen very, very carefully, it’s all in Hollywoodese….

Oh no.

What?

Is this that that same ol’ tired litany of how many and how much of our films are “inspired” by Hollywood, starting from when writers totter into the directors’/ producers’ office staggering under their load of DVD’s of the latest Hollywood hits to when the dance director scratches his/her pate to figure out which pelvic shudder from which Jennifer Lopez/Madonna/ Beyonce would best match which item number?

No, it isn’t, but I just need to make two points before I gallop on…

One - peep into a sheet of dialogue at your average Hindi film shooting one of these days and I will bet you my Oscar acceptance speech that it will written in English

Two - I suppose it is only because of the infinitely long arm of coincidence that the story of “Black” has an uncanny resemblance to a 1962 Hollywood (where else) film called the Miracle Worker, based on the William Gibson play, based on the real life story and characters of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan.
No?
Of course not. Did you not hear aapro Sanjay “Black”ji declaring that it was Helen Keller’s story and not the film that was his er, inspiration?
I did. But one of the most dramatic scenes in the Miracle Worker is the one where little Helen Keller (played by 16-year old patty Duke) makes the connection between the word “water” that Anne Sullivan (played by Anne Bancroft) would tap out on her hand and the cold, wet stuff that just got splashed on her. Wasn’t there a similar scene in “Black”? Or then maybe Sanjay “Black”ji, like WilliamGibson, read all of Anne Sullivan’s letters…
At any rate, the Miracle Worker won just a piffling 2 Oscars whereas hamara “Black”? 11! Oscars? No, Filmfare Awarads and if we had staged the function at the Kodak theatre, it would have been the same thing. Almost.

Are you done? Because we want to go to bed, since we were all up at 6 am and then till 2 am. Watching the Oscars….naturally.
No, I haven’t. Like I said, they should have had the Filmfare Awards function in the Kodak theatre instead of boring ol’ Bandra Kurla. Because, it was really the Almost Hollywood Awards function. I don’t know how many of you watched – after all, we were all busy betting on odds of a gay cowboy film winning Best Picture. And they “blacked out” (ulp, Sanjayji) poor Baby Bachchan’s hour of glory at the footlights. (Incidentally, don’t want to seem a gossipy Bollywood, er, I mean Hollywood bitchy type, but if Baby B and A are going to soon be Jodi No. 1, why weren’t they together on stage for “Kajara Re…”?) But if you did watch, apart from the titles of the movies and the film clips, you would have difficulty figuring that it was a function about Hindi films. Barely a word of Hindi was spoken. People presented, announced, gave away and tearfully accepted in impeccable Queen’s English. Almost. In fact, that was the only thing wrong - the accents. Should have been asli Ameercun, but old habits die hard, don’t you know, old sock.
Anyway, all this was the chillar paisa, or as they say in Hollywood, loose change, small beer compared to the climax.
Which was the Lifetime Achievement Award. No, no silly, not the one that Robert Altman got at the Oscars, but the one Shabana Azmi got at the Almost Hollywood…er, I mean Filmfare Awards. And one richly and most justly deserved. Ms. Azmi has to be one of India’s finest actresses with a filmography that would done anyone from Meryl Streep to Dame Judi Dench proud. And if ever there was a family background that an actress should have, it should be like Ms. Azmi’s. Father – Kaifi Azmi, one of India’s most luminous poets and song writers. Husband – Javed Akhtar, the stuff that legends are made of, especially Hindi film legends. Both wrote – and Javedji still does – in Hindustani.
Which is why I ask this stupid, idiotic question. Would it not be correct to say that the language of the films that showcased Ms. Azmi’s awesome talent was….Hindi?

I ask because in her superb, perfectly poised, beautifully delivered acceptance speech, worth of any Oscar (or Golden Globe or BAFTA ), there was not one word of Hindi. As I pondered on this difficult conundrum, I also pondered on this. The Oscar show got telecast to a few hundred countries, but I did not see any subtitles in Pushto or Finnish. Or Hindi. The Filmfare gig on the other hand, which may have reached into the drawing rooms of the far flung World Wide Kutumb of NRI, most of whom would sperchen da Hindi?

Anyway, I guess things have a habit of working themselves out so this will too. Ang Lee wound up his acceptance speech with a line in his matru bhasha, Chinese, for all his kith and kith and fans back home. So, who knows, maybe when one of us does make it to Heaven…er, I mean Hollywood (Leelaji, ready?) and win an Oscar, Hindi will finally get spoken. In the last line of that acceptance speech.

PS : - Maybe we could imitate one other Oscar tradition – remembering the family members who passed on. That way, there would have been a teent-weeny tribute to Nadira.