BUZZThe

It’s a project that’s right up her street, and Sushmita Sen’s making sure her stride’s firmly in check. The former beauty queen and actress is actively involved in the Wadhawan Lifestyle ‘I Am She’ contest, which will choose India’s official entry for the Miss Universe contest.

But the criteria for the candidates is much more than good height and an attractive face, claims Sush. The most important criterion for selection is a person with “good character”.

“When I say ‘character’, I mean that a lot of women who come to the contest are very beautiful, and some of them can do anything to achieve what they want. Such girls don’t belong to I Am She,” said Sushmita in an interview.

This year, 20 candidates have been shortlisted, and before the names are finalised, the candidates are interviewed and go through a thorough background check, she revealed, to ensure that the finalist is not disqualified on any grounds in the final competition.

Sushmita became the first Indian woman to win the Miss Universe crown in 1994. The still-stunning 35 year old said candidates were learning and getting better, and she has big plans for the future. Next year, Sushmita plans to take the finalists abroad for grooming sessions and to give them more global exposure.

“Next year onwards a new chapter begins - the host countries will change. Only the main show will be held in India. The girls will be groomed in other countries. This way they will get basic international exposure even before going to the Miss Universe platform... it will help them not to get off balance when they reach the main pageant,” she said.

In 2000, Lara Dutta became the second Indian to win the prestigious title, but there has been no winner after that.

So will Sush pick a winner? Let’s wait and see…

Aamir Khan’s laughing all the way to the bank and back. His hit adult comedy Delhi Belly has floored the box office, earning a whopping Rs. 15.65 crore on its first two days, and putting the much-hyped Big B starrer Bbuddah...Hoga Teraa Baap at what seems like a meager Rs. 4.26 crore. Perhaps it’s because Delhi Belly has a more interesting concept and is targetted at a much wider audience including the Indian young turks, while Bbudha… is, like the Big B now, more for the family. Also, it’s likely that had Bbudha’s marketing team a bit more savvy, they would have ensured its release with some non-entity movies, rather than one rolling the Aamir Khan banner. Well, whatever the reason, it seems like the more realistic urban, money-is-everything, foul-mouthed India with Imran Khan, Vir Das and Kunal Roy Kapoor have stolen the lead from Amitabh Bachchan, the flamboyant Paris-returned gangster. Seems like a sign of things to come….

It’s been nine long months since Bipasha Basu and John Abraham broke up, and though they may put on a cordial front, the truth is that they’re not even talking to each other.

Revealed an insider, “Bipasha gave nine years of her life to the relationship, even putting her career on hold whenever John needed her. She felt that everyone else was giving her so much love and respect, except John; that’s when she decided to end the relationship. Naturally, when their relationship ended, she chooses not to keep in touch with him. She made up her mind to move on and cut herself away from her past.”

Being single is giving the sexy star not just time to mingle, but to bask in the abundance of male attention that seems to

Model turned wannabe-actress best known for item numbers Khallas and IshqSamunder be coming her way. But after a nine-year relationship, the Bengali babe isn’t keen to get into a committment just yet. Work, apparently, is what she’s focussing on, with a bit of play on the side.

And one of those ‘side’ issues was with Hollywood heartthrob Josh Hartnett, who is starring with her in the upcoming film, Singularity? “Josh is wonderful, but in another country, so it’s impractical! Right now, I don’t think I have the energy to be in a relationship. Josh and I are very fond of each other and try to keep in touch, but I am not romantically attached to anyone currently. There is more to life than just men. I am doing a romantic comedy with R Madhavan soon. It’s a mad film and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s only work for me for now,” said Bips with disarming candidness.

Well, I guess it’s time Bips took a break to have some fun. She’s certainly earned it!

Sikh humour!

With an enviable cultural diversity, India has always had plenty of humourous material on its denizens, and for some strange reason, our Sikh bretheren have always topped the list. Now writer-director Sartaj Singh Pannu, who made his debut as an actor-filmmaker in his internationally acclaimed film Soch Lo, is now set to enthrall audiences with a full-fledged family entertainment movie on Sikhs.

“It’s about four brothers who go to the wild west of UP (Uttar Pradesh) to retrieve their ancestral belongings. It’s a film on the sense of humour and pride attached to the Sardars,” said Sartaj excitedly.

Unlike his first film, which he made with funds contributed by his friends, for this film the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) graduate is receiving corporate funding. Sartaj is also going a step forward and casting known names, with the likes of Bobby Deol and Akshay Khanna in mind. Not a bad choice, considering that both have proved their worth in comedy roles. It’s been a long, hard journey for this talented writer-director, so good luck to him with this latest venture.

As we all know, relationships are rife in Bollywood, but pairing together Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia D’Souza was a surprise. To date the couple have been particularly reticent about themselves, but it seems like the cat’s finally out of the bag. At a recent awards function in Toronto, Riteish and Genelia surprised Bollywood by walking around hand-in-hand, sitting together and even cooing what seemed like sweet nothings in each other’s ears. The couple, who have always claimed to be nothing more than co-stars are closer than we think, and a sign of things to come is apparent as Riteish was even seen chatting up Genelia’s mother, who seemed quite aware of her daughter’s affection for this versatile actor. Naturally, rumour is now rife on whether the relationship will blossom into matrimony. Yes, say insiders, very likely in early 2012. Well, good luck to the couple, hope all goes well for them.

For some reason, Indian moviegoers have taken a shine for zombie-flicks. And they won’t be disappointed, if Go Goa Gone and Shaadi of the Dead are anything to go by. Saif Ali Khan will produce Go Goa Gone, a story about a bunch of fun-loving youngsters who are assailed by zombies. On the other hand, Abhay Deol will star in Shaadi of the Dead, which is about an attack by zombies during a Punjabi wedding. Both movies are cited to take a lighter look at zombies, which is an interesting concept, considering that they’re talking about a horror-genre theme. And what’s more interesting is the race by both films to get to cinemas, showcasing themselves as the first of the zombie cult to hit the silver screen.

So who’s pegged to win the battle of the zombies? Any takers? Didn’t think so!

The seamier side of Goa will unravel on the silver screen with in a depiction set on the 2008 murder and sexual assault of British teen Scarlett Keeling.

More than three years after Scarlett was left to die at story is retold by Bollywood producer Sikandar Khan. The vivacious teenager who rode elephants, hung out at beach shacks and is said to have occasionally done drugs, will be played by ItalianUkranian model-cum-actress Nataliya Kozhenova. Nataliya, who has been working in Bollywood in a range of unremarkable roles since the past two years, says that the film projects the deceased Scarlett as a young girl who loved life and lived it to the hilt. “It was fantastic to get a chance to play Scarlett. It just happened by chance one day that director Shakeel Saifee asked me if I could play the role... My Hindi was zero at the time, but later I managed to even deliver my dialogues in Hindi,” said the 24-year-old, one of the many international actors who are succumbing to Bollywood’s appeal.

Scarlett’s sexual assault and death in 2008 marks a watershed period in Goa’s image as a safe holiday tourism destination, with the gory episode exposing Goa’s seedy underbelly as a destination for drugs. After the Scarlett case, Goa has seen a string of events that led to the state gaining infamy as a drug haven and as an unsafe tourist destination, especially for foreign women

Anjuna Beach by Sikander Khan and directed by Shakeel S. Sai, also stars Kiran Kumar and Iranian actress Farhanaaz, and is scheduled for release in end-July.

So does Goa hide something deeper and more sinister behind its beautiful beaches? We’ll soon know.

A lot has been written about Anil Kapoor’s presence in one of the biggest Hollywood franchises, Mission Impossible 4, but his absence from the movie’s first trailer, released recently, has raised questions among his fans.

Fans took to Twitter to express their resentment with Anil’s no-show in the trailer Mission: Impossible Protocol, which is otherwise high on action from Hollywood star Tom Cruise, who plays the role of spy Ethan Hunt. 4: Ghost Protocol ...Ethan Hunt. Eminem’s rap. But where’s Anil Kapoor & India,” posted Vivek Ranjit, while Manish Mission Impossible trailer out, and its 2 mins long, and still no sight of Anil Kapoor, is this why the film is called MI: Ghost

Another fan, Raghav Modi posted: “Ah! Typical that the Indian actor Anil Kapoor is nowhere to be Ghost Protocol trailer.

Some fans even mocked at the trailer and made fun that the actor, who made a mark internationally with Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire and a TV series 24, has not got any footage in the debut trailer of the much-awaited installment of the movie.

“I spotted Anil Kapoor in the Mission Impossible 4 trailer. He is in thin air!” posted someone under the name of sarfrazhaan, while another fan by the name of helloanand wrote: “Anil Kapoor is playing the role of Mr.India in MI4 That’s why you can’t see him.”

Apart from Tom Cruise, the movie features Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg. According to imdb.com, Anil plays the role of a man called Brij Nath.

Of what Indian editor and director Shirish Kunder posted on Twitter, it seems other Bollywood actors were quite jealous of Anil’s role in the international “So many people in Bollywood happy that Anil Kapoor does not feature in the trailer. The Great Indian Crab Mentality!” wrote Kunder, who is married to choreographer-director Farah

But all said and done, Anil recently shared how he had a “great” time shooting for the movie. In fact, he has also signed up to feature in Cities, co-starring Clive Owen. He will start shooting for the movie in November.

What’s the chitchat here between Salman and Karisma?

Send in your responses to info@indianlink.com.au

Last

“… keeping up the Kapoor family tradition of adopting obesity as a religion post middle-age…. no, I mean, excellence in cinema”.

Kala Swaminathan, Dunlop ACT

Kala wins a CD of new Hindi film DelhiBelly

BY SAROJA SRINIVASAN

Our sense of who we are is conditioned, though in a cosmic sense quite wrongly, often to where we live, and the profession we work in. Whilst these outward facts do influence our thinking, we have somehow allowed them to so overwhelm us that we may have lost our true sense of who we are deep inside in the very core of our being. Most of us realize we are more than what we look like, what we wear or what jobs we do. Yet we also seem to be swayed by others’ opinion and sometimes our own irrational beliefs.

Either one of the ways of dealing with the discomfort of migration, by denying the discomfort or by dwelling on it, only postpones the time of adjustment and acceptance of the choice that has been made. It is a voluntary choice for most people, and as such one has to accept the consequences of the decision. Only then will one be able to live contently, and enjoy the happiness which we all seek.

However, when expatriates decide to return home, the initial excitement is around the knowledge that they will no longer be a ‘foreigner’. ‘Home’ is where they don’t have to think about being different, where they no longer have to apologise for every act of their fellow countryman’s eccentricities and need never think about navigating strange and unknown ways of behaving. That is in theory. In reality, what the expat doesn’t expect is that ‘home’ now demands more getting used to than abroad. Time has not stood still at ‘home’. The shock and horror at having to do things differently in one’s own country! Surely living in a different country meant adjusting to strange and unknown ways, but to have to confront the same thing in one’s own country is unthinkable. Up to a point this is true. We know how to behave at home (if we haven’t forgotten) and usually we know what to expect (even though we may be a bit rusty on this point).

We all expect ‘home’ to be a place where everything will be familiar and we just slot in. But what we forget is that ‘home’ also means a certain way of behaving with certain people at the time, and routines that were present at the time. And now suddenly after a period of absence, things have changed at ‘home’, things that we didn’t expect to change.

While we have been away, relationships have been formed, some have been broken and yet others are waiting in the wings to be made. Children of relatives have become young men and women who are very self-assured with their own ideas. Older relatives who were selfreliant have now become more dependent. Living away from one’s culture allows a certain flexibility in behaving, which may not be allowed back in one’s own culture. Everything that made you different and an object of curiosity also brought you a lot of attention in an alien culture, but now suddenly you are one in a million similar people and you are not special any more! “You are one of the crowd,” V.S. Naipaul wrote of his first visit to India. And this merging with the rest may initially be a shock to many.

Some on the other hand, go out of their way to merge and be a ‘local’. Some may insist on doing without the conveniences they have become used to in an effort to be at ‘home’ in their own ‘home’. There are also those who actively resist ‘fitting back in’. The new anonymity is too harsh to digest.

And so we often see the expatriate return to the status of being an ex-patriot. The difficulty in engaging the interest of one’s family and friends about their ‘overseas experience’ is truly vexing for some. The novelty of ‘slide shows’ is not there anymore, as many have been overseas themselves. It seems no one is particularly welcoming, nor have the time to rejoice at this mammoth decision of the expatriot to return home.

Soon it becomes obvious that much readjustment is required to be able to live back in one’s own culture. Another fundamental cultural adjustment, quite different to the first one is now needed. Being so acclimatised to foreign culture for so long, one may expect the ‘known’ culture to be the same as what it was overseas. The fact is, re-entry in to one’s own culture can be as unsettling as the culture shock one experienced on the first overseas trip. The sting hurts.