Yet Another Point of View

Aamir Khan is all over the place these days. Is that too much of a good thing? If I remember right, among the 3 Khan heroes, Aamir was the media 'un'friendly one. He does only about one film a year, never comes to award shows or accepts awards, definitely does not dance in them, and does not (or at least until recently) do pre-release interviews or photo-shoots claiming that he "prefers his work to speak for itself". But over the last couple of weeks I think he's gone berserk. Whatever channel I flip over to, he's there in every ad-break. He's also walking the ramp (some stupendously boring Van Huesen show), singing (I dread the day he'll try to do a Farhan Akhtar!), giving people haircuts (Ghajini buzz cuts to some unsuspecting souls, that was hilarious !), chit-chatting on talk shows, showing off his six pack, even taking pot-shots at the other members of the six-pack club like Salman Khan & SRK. All this in the name of Ghajini! Obviously, Aamir

When it comes to beauty pageants, we desi girls know exactly what to say. Parvathy Omanakuttan was crowned 1st runner up in the Miss World 2008 pageant last night. At the risk of agitating a whole community of mallus and probably the Femina Miss India folks too, who crowned her Miss India 2008 in the first place and sent her to Johannesburg, I have to say that I didn’t think she had a chance in hell. I don’t think she is pretty. At the pageant finale (televised live on Zee Café last night), she wore this very uninspiring white gown . Her hair looked like it had just come out of the dryer in the laundromat. When she was the 15th name called forward to the semi-final line up, I attributed it to luck. Then they chose her for the final 5 and I muttered to myself “the beauty industry needs the Indian market, that’s why.” Finally came that all-important question, where beauty queens have traditionally delved deep into a pageant-lexicon that includes heart-warming syllables like ‘love’, ‘com

“It’s recession. Girls are actually marrying for love.” Then, the host of the Oye, Its Friday show (NDTV Imagine) paused a second for the canned laughter. Now why did that sound familiar? Because, not only had I read this pathetic joke earlier in some TOI weekend supplement but I had also seen this SMS joke do the rounds about a week ago. The last thing I expected of Farhan Akhtar on his new talk show was stale humor. Actually, I wonder what the show was exactly. It was a hybrid mish-mash of a joke-heavy Jay Leno plus irreverent Jimmy Kimmel plus celebrity-on-sofa Ellen plus spoofy SNL. Throw in a couple of Bollywood awards night type song-n-dance performances. Fit in a prodigious drummer kid who appears, makes a helluva lot of noise and then disappears. Include a tail-piece spoof that strips SRK’s Friday release Rab Ne Banaa Di Jodi to pieces (but why?!! Is this some new form of viral marketing?). Thank God, there was Hrithik Roshan sitting around, though even he looked uncomfortable

I admit I have some time on my hands these days (refer to before mentioned accident that renders me temporarily immobile) and was digging around in some old papers. I found the below dry-cleaning receipt carefully preserved. Go on, read the fine print. LOL guaranteed. Ready for the back side? :)) Since the esteemed cleaners are not "reasonable in case of fire or theft" and since they "sell without any notice", I collected my sweaters from them promptly on time. However, they are not as responsible as they claim to be in T&C 6. I obviously did not turn in the bill. And yeah, can anyone please explain what on earth is "clour touch" (see T&C 7) and why Limra Cleaners finds it so untouchable?

Ah, the age of instant communication! I received an SMS from my cousin this evening. "Step out and look at the moon tonite. Its awesome :)" He lives in far-flung Rudrapur, in the northern state of Uttarakhand, but its unlikely that the moon, in its 'smiley' arrangement with Venus and Jupiter tonight, would be looking any less beautiful here in Bangalore. Of course, in my present 'disabled' circumstances (remember my accident last month), I couldnt really hobble out to view this lunar spectacle. Neither could I convince anyone at home to go out and click pictures of the trio-in-the-sky for me. Well, if the real is unavailable, there's always the virtual. So, I checked out the moon on the Internet tonight. Seems, there are plenty of folks who posted 'smiling moon' pictures online. Cute. As a friend pointed out, its nice to have someone smile down at us in these sad and terrorising times. PS: Let me give due credit to the illustration above. Its from