Khalid Mohamed

If they are ignored, they hate it. If they are adored, they detest it, frequently groaning about the pressures of star adulation. For convention’s sake, top-rankers in the popularity charts do scrawl their signature for autograph hunters. And they also say “Cheddar” or “Cheese” for their fans clicking them on cellphone cameras at airport lounges. Like it or not, though, the smiles are plain put-on paneer.

Yesterday a kiss was taboo, today it determines the kissmat of a movie. The Censor Board doesn’t reach for the scissors anymore, they’re actually permitting a quotient of permissiveness, touchwood, touch lipstick.

They were the master chefs of gaajar halwa. They were the empresses of tailoring machines on which they sewed, sewed and sewed the neighbour’s petticoats to pay for their 40-year-old sons’ college fees.

Always say no to drugs. Now after Dum Maaro Dum nix them in the movies as well. Pun absolutely unintended, but DMD was one helluva hash, pilfering ideas from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Alejandra Inarritu’s Amores Perros. And heavens, it didn’t spare Dev Anand’s quaint Hare Rama Hare Krishna either.

No one rejects Rajinikanth, incontestably India’s No. I superstar. Now, trust Ma’am Re to nix an offer no one else would have had the audacity to refuse. The far more market-seductive Deepika Padukone and Vidya Balan will be seen in the Chennai supremo’s next project Rana. Not Rekha. She would rather stay in the solitary splendour of her sea-facing home in Mumbai. No men are allowed beyond the gates “except one”, she insists, the allusion being to you-know-who.

Be it grotesquely grungy or gorgeously glamorous, it’s all there. And like it or not, Bollywood fashion does majorly influence the dress code of the nation. Even hoity-toity designers score a hit at the Fashion Weeks (which are multiplying faster than frisky rabbits), only when a film personality assents to be their show-stopper. Of course, the

Those are just some moments from my memory-file. Anyone who has spent an hour, or even less, with A.R. Rahman, the divinely-blessed ministrel of music, has a take on his depth of being, sense of self-wonderment and above all, in-bred humility. In the event, perhaps no book can satisfactorily encapsulate his genius. Or collar the

India’s sparkling. Champagne is being uncorked by more Hollywood movie moghuls than ever before at the swishy suites of Rajasthan’s palace hotels.