the world this week

The other day I had the fortune(?) to watch the finals of Pantaloons Femina Miss India ’11 (got cool VIP-category Gold Class front-row passes, courtesy Boss)

Gorav and I were excited at the promise of free beer in 5-star environs, with film stars and wannabe MissIndias strutting around! Finally we were at the cusp of getting into Page 3 party snaps! The let-down couldn’t have been more ironical – Mehboob Studio in Bandra was no any-star, there was no free- or for-sale beer (no food either), and since we got late in reaching the venue, all the special ‘Gold Class’ seats were gone, and we had to content ourselves with standing at the far end of the hall, where we were constantly being asked to move our butts ‘coz we disturbing some or the other imbecile’s view of the ‘beautiful’ Miss India contestants.

The only iota of excitement was when a string of losers like Kangna Ranaut, Fardeen Khan, Dino Morea, Leander Paes and Prachi Desai passed Gorav and me on their way to the judges’ podium. Ms. Ranaut, I believe, has been having a bad field day ever since a botched lip job, so she seldom looks up to face anybody – she probably feels the entire world has nothing better to do than watching her messed up lips!

The anchor of the event was one of the most stupid people whom the organizers could find, some loser TV artist named Manish Paul – perhaps they had organized another, parallel written test where the guy with the least IQ (about 15 or so!) was selected to anchor the show. He complimented himself by calling other morons (read unseen, unheard of TV artists) to the stage, who introduced us to the finalists of the Miss India contest. It seemed like a prologue to the horror show that was yet to start, what with ‘beauties’ from Bhubaneshwar, Lucknow, Shimla, and other such places telling the audiences their ages and hobbies! God, half of them couldn’t even say their names and origins properly!!

Then the show started with a bunch of faux-attitude youngsters (whom almost nobody had ever heard of, but as per the venerable Mr. Paul, had won many awards in singing rock songs. Where, nobody seemed to know). They hammed and lip-synced to a song I had never come across, but the guy at the drums who was wearing white sunglasses seemed to be really happy seeing so many people looking at, guess what, his white sunglasses, and we just prayed for it to end.

The neat bits were Sonakshi Sinha’s song and dance show, and even Malaika Arora’s sequence was bearable. Hard Kaur lip-synced too, but she was at least energetic in her dancing. Sonu Sood came with a suit made of some Ramlila left-over shiny black satin fabric, and couldn’t wait to slip out of it and dance for the Malaika Arora’s ‘Munni Badnam’ piece. He has good muscles, though – better than me, even! Which of course, made me feel slightly jealous.

We left the show mid-way hungry, and angry too, at being constantly tortured without being offered any beer! The masterpiece of the half-evening was a bunch of three asses who had cross-dressed (one of them was Babloo Mukherjee, son of Keshto Mukherjee – Keshto Ji must be turning in his grave seeing his loser son doing what he was doing), and bombarded us with inane banalities that they must have felt were jokes! I could have smothered them publicly, which would have made a better gory show that what the Miss India contestants were up to.

Anyways, I can’t possibly devote any more time describing such a big mistake of mine – going to the Miss India finals with false hopes! To better things now – last week, I watched ‘The Savages’ (‘07) by Tamara Jenkins, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman, I guess, has stopped acting ‘coz he’s gotten so sublime he maybe doesn’t need to act anymore (reminded me of Paul Giamatti in ‘Sideways’ (’04) by Alexander Payne, which is another gem). ‘The Savages’ is quite capable of spellbinding you (same with Sideways), so see if you could get to download it at the earliest.

For comedy buffs, there is ‘Zelig’ (’83) by Woody Allen. It was one of his initial works, something so unusually shot I’ve never seen anything like it before, and gives you a hint of his genius which is so very evident in his later works like ‘Husbands and Wives’ and ‘Annie Hall’

Then there was the thoroughly enjoyable ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ (’05) by Shane Black – makes you actually start liking Robert Downey Jr.!

Nothing much on other fronts, life’s as good as it could be. Keshav has passed his Sr. KG with all A+s and As, and is pretty excited about it – has been asking for a Kinder Joy as a reward, which I’m yet to get for him. Hopefully, tomorrow. He will now be moving to Std. I

See you soon