Jalaj P. Jha

Television serials are synonym to “Slow Motion” nowadays. Just take the example of “Balika Vadhu”. Sugana got pregnant nearly during the same timeline as my wife in real life. While we had our baby in 1st week of April 2009, it took Sugana many more months before the child was born.

And now it is with the Anandi’s death episode(s). All channels were flooded with advertisements about Anandi’s probable death with pretext that she is leaving for the sake her academic exams. All news channels expanded this ad to full hour news so that the whole nation knows that Anandi is dying and on the 10th of March, the day that was reported as her last day, number of people including those who had stopped watching this serial were found glued to their TV sets to see this unfortunate episode. Unfortunately they are yet to what happened at last, as even after 3 episodes getting aired since 10th, she is still alive and (viewers) kicking (their heads).

Though people may not have found the death episode entertaining, people’s view of this subject. Social networking sites were flooded with interesting messages. Just a  few minutes back I read

Can someone please tell me who is this Anandi?

Hey people if you are one of those asking this above question, please stay away. You are fortunate ones and don’t spoil your coming days by starting to know Anandi, her TV serial, the Channel…

Here are few interesting reactions on the net

Now that Anandi is dead, the show will be renamed “Balak Vidhur”

Finally Balika Vadhu changed Anandi to Parmanandi.

Look at women inequality in India – Baa is still alive from centuries and Anandi dies at such young age!

Q. What was the best dialogue of Anandi in the serial? A. Nothing, she always preferred to cry

Q. Who’s most upset with Balika Vadhu’s exit from the show? A. Anandi’s Real Life School Canteen

now there will be a new show "Anandi ka Swayamvar" to search a husband for balika vadhu II

After Anandi’s death, now Jagdish is the hottest bachelor of his village!

people who never used to go to temple will now go and pray to god for returning Anandi back to show

Behind Anandi’s exit,there is a ‘raaz pichhle janam ka’

after death of Anandi in balika vadhu the show again starts with name baalik vadhu……. pakki Umar ke kacche Rishte

why did Anandi choose to leave the show? She was tired of wearing the same clothes in all the events, functions and programs

With Anandi’s death now serial should be renamed to “Balika Vadh (murder)”

Apparently Anandi’s ‘real-world’ exams were approaching that’s why she’s shown dead. Exam kills eh!

Some people commented on Anandi getting fat recently

I can finally see the other characters in the serial, post Anandi’s death. So long, she was occupying my entire TV screen

Even after buying a 46" lcd, i couldn’t watch Balika vadhu properly…Now that Anandi is dead, i will be finally in peace

The camera man will now be relieved,coz they had to work extremely hard to fit that hugely sized Anandi

Why did Anandi die in balika vadhu?A. The producers were suffering losses paying for her food

So it’s still not clear if Anandi’s dead or not, or will be dead or not. What i clear is that the channel just managed to get back the viewers for at least for a few days. If I ever get to write a parody on late Sharad Joshi’s story “Tum Kab Jaoge Athithi” it would be titled “Tum Kab Marogi Anandi?”

Just happened to see this funny commercial.

The commercial starts with a man looking awestruck open-mouth. Next it is revealed that he was looking  towards a very beautiful lady who’s just passing by. Then a lot of other men are shown watching the lady holding their breath. The lady enters the lift and as the lift gets closed it is revealed who held the breath for the longest time. Do watch!!!

“My name is Khan”, Shahrukh Khan’s latest movie shows him as a person with Asperger’s Syndrome which makes it difficult for a person to interact socially and add other problems as phobia towards yellow color. If you have already viewed this movie just imagine how the movie would be if there was no Asperger’s Syndrome in the storyline and Shahrukh’s character was as healthy as anyone else. Imagine the scene where he gets detained at the Airport for security check, the scene where he first meets Mandira (played by Kajol), where he proposes her and all other scenes. Imagining that would not be difficult at all as Acting and facial expressions remains more or less same in all movies portraying a normal healthy person to the extent that Shahrukh’s own movie ‘Om Shanti Om’ laughs at it showing the protagonist’s two movies nominated for Filmfare awards having same ‘My name is Rahul…’ lines.

Disabilities and Disorders in characters give the actor chance to come out a with different performance, which also helps in pulling audience and at the same time also helps in increasing the length of the movie with details and circumstances around it. Let’s have a look at other movies that portrayed Disabilities and Disorders

DARR (1993)
Shahrukh Khan played a character who feels mentally and socially broken after the death of his mother whom he loved too much. He still feels his mother around him and is frequently seen talking with her over phone. He though talks well with any other person but shies when talking to his love interest Kiran and stammers when calling her name. His stammering ‘k.k..k..k…Kiran’ is still remembered even after 17 years. Shahrukh played similar character later in Anjaam which though was not a commercial success bagged him Filmfare award for best actor in villainous role.

PAA (2009)
Amitabh Bachchan plays a 12 year old boy suffering from Progeria due to which his physical growth runs 5-6 times faster making him look like 65 year old. Apart from the disorder the movie was in news as Amitabh was playing son of his real life son Abhishek Bachchan.

GHAJINI (2008)
Amir Khan played a rich character who falls in love with a girl who is later killed. He too gets severely injured and suffers from anterograde amnesia due to which he cannot remember anything past 15 minutes. Rest of the movie moves around his attempts to discover the killer and take revenge.

This movie gave Amir a chance to build body. His hair style porting short hair with operation stitch marks was aped by lots of his fans.

KOI MIL GAYA (2003)
What else would you need if you have a storyline of Steven Spielberg’s Extra Terrestrial and Special Effects aped from Independence Day, Songs and other masala of bollywood? Apparently nothing but when an Adult Hritik Roshan is meant to play a character played by a child in E.T. you either need to change the storyline or screen Hritik as a mentally retarded person. That’s Koi Mil Gaya! Hritik plays a mentally retarded person who suffered a blow when still in womb thus born retarded. Later he meets a creature from outer world who finally cures Hritik to enable him live a normal life. The movie was a huge success and Hritik’s style of dialog delivery is still remembered.

DOSTI (1964)
An emotional story of two friends one blind since birth and other crippled in an accident. This movie was a huge hit and still remembered for it’s heart touching songs ‘Jaanewalo zara..’, ‘Chahunga mein tujhe…’ and others. Incidentally this is the only Black & White movie that I watched on Big screen.

There are many more movies that I would love to add… may be save them for later

I signed up on twitter long time ago, but could never really use it, perhaps because I was never an sms fan and posting “What you are doing?” really was not for me. It was during terrorist attack in Mumbai that I first started using it to follow Arun Shanbhaag who was reporting activities at Taj Hotel from his home a few hundred metres away. This was followed by a long period of inactivity again.

A few days ago I decided to start using Twitter again to follow you know whom? The Bollywood Stars. One of my interests in the past had been reading a lot of magazines about Bollywood. These magazines are often called gossip magazines and often report facts that are just not real. So why not hear from the stars directly. Of course what they tweet would exclude all the masala stuff that magazines report like who is linked to whom, who got cosmetic surgery done, who put on weight and where

Since there are far more fake profiles than the real ones when it comes to these stars, I started with one profile which I knew was genuine, Akhishek Bachchan’s ( he himself told me ), and following the ones being followed by them and now I am following more than 50 stars. Here are a few interesting ones

Amrita Rao Her twitter profile claims that genuineness of her profile can be verified from the link on her website. Now how can one know that her website is genuine? from the link on her twitter profile page. And as per an old joke how can we verify that both are genuine? well from each others’ link. Is her profile genuine? let’s see!

Deepika Padukone Her account name is DeepikaCalling. She is the current brand ambassador for BSNL and her ads for BSNL have a catchphrase “Hindustaan bol raha hai” (India is calling). So you see her account name reflects the same. But wait! Who is PadukoneD? whom Daboo Ratnani the famous photographer is following? A fake profile it seems.

Mallika Sherawat is wearing a dress(?) with design that of US Flag, her account name ends with LA (Los Angeles?) and she is following ‘White House’ among others. This makes a story! Hey any magazine interested in hiring me as a (gossip) reporter? Her official website made in association with glamsham.com has an adsense ad on the top. Mallika is it that you didn’t pay glamsham for the site or you yourself earning from ad?

That’s all for now. Back to twitter to search more stars. Want to follow me?