Yet Another Point of View

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 ...

People say the darndest things on TV. The whole of Thursday 27th Nov, the news channels have been covering the Mumbai situation almost round the clock. Early in the day, one of the channels (I forget which one) showed a snippet of foreigner responses to the attacks. A guy in New York was condemning the attack and saying this to the reporter - "We know life is cheap in India but this time they have targeted foreigners." I couldnt believe the guy actually said that. Shocked and outraged as I am by the Mumbai attacks, I have been glued to the TV all day, but they havent repeated that clip again. And I am very very sure I didnt dream that up. He said that!! And people brave a lot to get on TV too. Some IT yuppie living near Colaba went out onto the streets soon after Wednesday night's blast, took pictures and posted them to CNN's ireport. They interviewed him on the CNN news. He came on BBC World News too. I am all for the concept of citizen journalism...I just hope no ...

Some time ago, Sony TV's game show Dus Ka Dum , hosted by the incorrigible Salman Khan, had Ranbir Kapoor accompanied by his girlfriend, Deepika Padukone, as guest. If I remember right, he goofed up big time. He had crossed the 10 lakh milestone and then took a chance on the 1 crore question. He guessestimated the % range wrong and promptly lost all his earnings, save one lakh. Salman Khan laughed hard (for some inexplicable reason he mentioned in a following episode). Anyway, that’s beside the point. What I noticed was the way chocolate-boy Kapoor conducted himself on the show. The guy was the epitome of sharaafat . He dared not raise his voice, wouldn’t even laugh out loud and almost bent over backwards addressing Salman Khan as Sir. I am not sure if that’s his real act, but it was like watching an obedient school prefect in the headmaster's office. Well, Ranbir Kapoor sure seems to be taking lessons from Salman Khan, at least in one department - dropping his shirt. In Bachna...