Bollywood Star on SBS Australia: Or why the project is doomed from get go.

The much-hyped Bollywood Star show on SBS channel Australia - which hopes to find, groom and lauch the Bollywood career of six Aussies - is doomed to fail. 

Here’s why.

Because this should be a geneology hunt, not a talent hunt: Whoever came up with the dumb idea that you need talent to make it in Bollywood? 

The most reliable and sureshot way to make it into Bollywood is to possess the right genes. Nearly 90 per cent of the current crop of top Bollywood actors have taken this tried-and-tested path to Bollywood stardom. Think Abishek Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, Abhay Deol, Imran Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha: all made it, thanks to the right sirname and familal connections. 

Even a B-grade actor such as Emraan Hashmi had to find a geneological relation to Mahesh Bhatt before he got casted to his first film. 

So if SBS genuinely wants to help these poor sods become a Bollywood Star, it should be sponsoring a find-your-ancestors show not a talent hunt. The six winning finalists can be the ones who find the closest geneological connection to any of the film families: the Khans of all varieties, Chopras, Deols, Kapoors, Bhatts, Roshans et al.

Because this is not a beauty contest: If genes are not very obliging, the next best way to Bollywood is winning an international beauty contest. Think Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta and Dia Mirza. All of them beat some seriously white skin to get a crown on their head. 

So another option SBS has is organising a seriously ambitious sounding beauty contest. As you must have noticed, any title with “India” in it doesn’t make the cut. (Sorry Ms India-Australia). It has to be more than that. (Now the titles of Universe, World and Earth are already taken, but Galaxy, Milky Way and Solar System are still available for SBS to cadge). 

Because foreigners have no place in Bollywood: Name one foreigner who has had a successful Bollywood career. 

If you have a white skin, you can only graduate to villains or vamps, no matter how much you profess to love dancing, colours and curries. Why? Elemetary, Mr Watson. Bollywood films are about how great Indians are, and having a white-skinned hero or heroine would defeat the very purpose. 

But... but... what about Katrina Kaif, you’ll say? What about her? She didn’t make it into Bollywood on the basis of being a beautiful Brit of Indian ancestry. She made it purely on the strength of being Salman Khan’s girlfriend - she piggybacked on him in all her initial films. 

Because Mahesh Bhatt is the chosen producer/director to launch the six finalists and Mahesh Bhatt has not made a decent film in more than a decade. In the last five years, he has made three films - all flops. He is also disgustingly sensational. These days he is busy launching the career of Sunny Leon, an international porn star trying to gain respectability as a Bollywood star (Yes, indeed, our six finalists will be joining such elevated company). 

Because one episode down, we are already scraping the bottom of the barrel: Any talent hunt which is reduced to selecting three contestants out of the last six - after going through some 300 contestants - is seriously in trouble. 

Supriya Pari Prakash: Or why we decided to give a middle name to our daughter.

It is only your spare name, darling!

I always thought that middle names were silly. They added unnecessary length to the name. They served no real purpose in modern life where our efforts and not our pedigree took us forward. And they sounded pompous. 

In fact, I earned my middle name quite by accident. My 10th grade teacher took it upon herself to tack my Dad’s middle name to mine before sending off the list to the High School Board. My high school degree arrived in the name of Chetna Rao Mahadik instead of a simple Chetna Mahadik. Having insidiously imprinted itself on this critical document of my life, the “Rao” then made its way to all my subsequent degrees, bank accounts and passports. 

Seventeen years on, I am still trying to get rid of it. 

Which is why, when Sid and I started thinking of names for our daughter, a middle name had no place in my plans. 

It was a chance discussion with friends that first got me thinking that middle names made little sense for my generation, but could be critical for my daughters’. 

You see, my daughter belongs to a generation whose life and actions will be imprinted all over the internet. From this blog, to her blogs and whatever other social media that takes over Facebook and twitter: her life, photos, opinions and actions will be played out in public. And with that public life will come the very possible risk of public embarassment. 

I think a lot of my child’s peers will look back at their teenage years and wish that they could somehow distance themselves from those internet words, images and personality attached to their names. And since they'll be unable to change the internet, many of them will change their names instead. 

And frightening as it seems, my daughter could be one of those wanting a new name. 

Taking this possibility into consideration, suddenly a middle name sounded not pompous but practical. It acts as spare name, waiting in reserve if someone found their first name too internet-tainted. If Supriya had an official middle name, a name change would not involve crazy and painful paperwork. It would simply mean dropping her first name, and adopting her middle name for most public purposes. 

So it is that a tiny, innocuous “Pari” made it between the Supriya and Prakash of my daughter’s name. 

And I sincerely hope that she never finds any use for it. 

My 32nd birthday: Or why I have only turned 26 today.

On my 26th birthday - six years ago - I hit rock bottom. 

According to the “plan”, I should have finished my studies, gotten married, travelled a bit, and had my first child by then. Instead, I was still stuck in Mumbai, single as hell, and had been struggling for two years to get a good scholarship to cover a masters somewhere outside of India. Obviously, there was no child in the picture (much to my parent’s relief I might add). 

It was then that I first considered the possibility that I may never get married, never have children, never travel the world and never do that blasted masters in some vague liberal arts subject that I so dearly wanted to do. After all, just because I wanted those things didn’t mean that the Universe in any way felt obliged to give them to me. 

Funnily enough, it was between that birthday and the next that I finally cadged a scholarship to an arts master’s programme, got my first passport stamp (to Switzerland) and most importantly: met Sid. How far could that baby be?

Six years afar it seems. On my 32nd birthday today, I can finally say that yes, I have finished my studies, gotten married, travelled a fair bit, and yes, yes, yes, I am the mother of a two-month old baby girl. 

No wonder, I feel have finally turned 26 today. 


Happy Birthday to me!

Catch 22: Or Why I Can't Finish Reading A Food Review

Guess the taste: raw beef, eggs and potatoes

In my entire life, I have never been able to finish reading a food review. Sorry Naresh, sorry Iain, sorry Guy (the food reviewers that I worked with) - not even yours, not even the ones that I may have joined you for the food to. 

It is not because I don’t care for food. I do. I really do. Bad food upsets me. Bad service upsets me. Bad ambience upsets me. Which is why I was permanently upset in London - the food quality was so poor in general. 

Today, while reading a review in the toilet of a seafood restaurant Dimitri’s by some Mr Michael Harden in the latest Melbourne Weekly, I finally figured out why. 

It is because most of the review is just gibberish to me. 

Here’s a line out of the review. “There will still be the superb spakonita made with wild greens, the semonila-dusted calamari served with auso aioli, French toast made with baklava and the brilliant gigantes - large tomoatoey baked beans served with poached eggs, loukaniko sausages and feta, all examples of the modern Greek approach that owner Jim Karabagias does with intuitive flair.” 

To begin with, I find my comprehension hiccuping four times in that one sentence - at “spakonita”, “auso ailoi”, “gingates” and "loukanikos”. And each time I hiccup, my interest in the review falls a few notches unconsciously. (In all, I hiccuped nine times in the tiny half page review). 

Besides, even when I do recognise all the ingredients I find it tough to imagine them together - French toast made with baklava? Now there are people who can simply put unlikely ingredients together in their minds and conjure up the taste. They are usually contestants in MasterChef. To the rest of us, the words describing the dishes are simply gibberish until we actually taste them. And if we can’t imagine the taste, how will be know that we will like the taste? 

The only time a food review comes to life for me is when something goes wrong with the service - the staff is rude, or the food comes too late or the bill contains an unexpected charge. Because human F-ups are something we all can relate to. 

The problem is that food reviewers want to bring to you interesting new restaurants offering interesting new foods in interesting new ambience. But newer the foods, ingredients and atmosphere, the more I hiccup, and the more I lose interest. 

And that is what I call a Catch 22.