Indian-Times by Paul McLane

18b

Bollywood

indiantimes

Amitabh Bachchan in a spot over Jumma Chumma

Picture source: lightscamerabollywood

hat happens when Amitabh Bachchan speaks extensively on gender sensitisation? He gets asked about the portrayal of women in his own films. After he spoke at the Penguin Annual Lecture in the Capital on Friday, an audience member asked the actor if he approved of the way women were portrayed in his films. To this, media personality Rajdeep Sardesai, who was moderating the session post the lecture, quoted a magazine as saying, “Jumma Chumma, a song from his film Hum (1991), was the closest cinema had come to almost sanctioning the idea of a potential gangrape”, and asked Bachchan if cinema should imbibe some of the values he spoke of, when it comes to Indian women. Bachchan replied, “I am certain that recent events and social uprising to those events has given way to a thought process amongst society in general, that is looking at each aspect of what is happening, morally, socially, with a microscope. But everything isn’t as bad as it is being portrayed and I feel maybe there are moments when a lot more is looked into than is actually true. I’m very happy there are questions. I am very happy to be put in a spot and asked why this is happening and I am very happy

to make amends,” he said. However, the 71-year-old added, “In all our films we have always propagated poetic jus-

tice in three hours. No one that has dealt in an oppressive manner with any woman is allowed to go free. But unless you show

the crime, how are you going to really punish him? Perhaps, that is what has happened,” he said. When asked if he would

do Jumma Chumma again, he answered, “You must be joking. They are never going to ask me to do Jumma Chumma!”

Want to take my kids to Peshawar: Shah Rukh

“My family is from Peshawar and few of them still live there. I would love to come to Peshawar and bring my children over because my father took me when I was 15. Then he passed away. December 2013 Edition

uperstar Shah Rukh Khan wants totake his children -- Aryan, Suhana and AbRam -- to Peshawar, where his family hails from. Shah Rukh, who was in the capital to be a part of Agenda Aajtak conclave, did not refuse the request of former Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar to visit Pakistan and said he would love to go back to the place again where his father took him when he was too young. “My family is from Peshawar and few of them still live there. I would love to come to Peshawar and bring my children over because my father took me when I was 15. Then he passed away. I still have some of the greatest memories of the time I spent with my father in Peshawar, Karachi and Lahore. I just wish that I could take my children there someday,” he said. Shah Rukh was born in India but his father Taj Mohammed Khan, who was one of the youngest freedom fighters, was from Peshawar. The ‘Chennai Express’ star also praised the warm hospitality of the people from across the border. “The one thing that I learnt from there is that people there are very warm. They know how to greet their guest. I have learnt the art of loving and welcoming people from them,” he said. Shah Rukh feels that the tension between the two countries should reduce and they again become friends. “I hope that we become friends and be like a family because if we come together than we have the greatest of things for each other,” he added. Shah Rukh, 48, who recently became a father of AbRam, born through surrogacy, said the six-month-old baby is fine now and has got dimples like him. “AbRam is very much healthy. He is a good-looking baby and has got dimples. I and Gauri (wife) decided to go for a third child because we were missing the childhood of our kids. My son is 16 and daughter is 13 and they always lock themselves up in their room with their friends. So, we decided to have a third child and keep Gauri busy with the new born,” he added.