Always like
- Manu Ginobli
- Dev Ananad
- Roger Federer
- Kapil Dev - The best there is, was or will be
- Leander Paes
- Vijay Amritraj
- Bill Maher
- Amitabh Bacchan
- Rahul Dravid
- Vishwanathan Anand
- JRD & Ratan Tata
- Geet Sethi
- Aishwarya Rai
- Madhubala
- Govinda
- Pondicherry
- Singapore
- My Family
- Mobikes
- Traveling
- Movies
- Akshay Kumar
- Manoj Bajpai
- Sonali Bendre
- MJ
-
- Always grateful to
My Country, Family & Friends, Subhas Chandra Bose, Shaheed Bhagat Singh , Chandrashekhar Azad , Sardar Patel, Lala Lajpat Rai, Lal Bahadur Shastri , Lakshmi Bai- Jhansi Ki Rani, Shivaji Maratha, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Veer Savarkar , Rajkumari Amrit Kaur , Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit , Abdul Ghaffar Khan , Pattabhi Sitaramayya , Bipin Chandra Pal , Mangal Pandey , Aruna Asaf Ali, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Birju Maharaj, Kishore Kumar , Kundan Lal Saigal , Mohammed Rafi, C.V. Raman , Homi Bhabha , Jagdish Chandra Bose , Meghnad Saha , M. Visvesvaraya , Anil Kakodkar, Birbal Sahni , Srinivasa Ramanujan , Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar , Har Gobind Khorana, Dayanand Saraswati , Raja Ram Mohan Roy , Ramakrishna Paramhansa , Swami Vivekananda , Vinoba Bhave , Kiran Bedi , Medha Patkar , Shanta Sinha , Baba Amte , Jyotiba Phule , Shahu Chhatrapati ,Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , Premchand , Rabindranath Tagore , Anita Desai , Arundhati Roy , Jhumpa Lahiri , Mulk Raj Anand , R.K. Narayan , Salman Rushdie , Vikram Seth , V.S. Naipaul , Kiran Desai , Mahadevi Varma , Shashi Deshpande , Shobha De , Khushwant Singh , Nirad C. Chaudhuri , Subhadra Kumari Chauhan , Subramanya Bharathi , Mahasweta Devi ,Girija Devi , Kumar Gandharva , Vishwanath Rao Ringe , Bhimsen Joshi , Pandit Jasraj , Balamurali Krishna , Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan Tenzing Norgay , Mirabai , Sister Nivedita , M G Ranade , Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
Current Favorites
Katrina Kaif
Harold & KUMAR
Ayesha Takia
Like most of the time
Underdogs
Nadal - not when he plays FedEx
London
Dojokovic -- not when he plays FedEx
A Rod
Manny Ramirez
Goa
Pokhara - Nepal
Bombay
Calcutta
Dalhousie
Used to like
Sachin Tendulkar
Kareena
Salman
Mahesh Bhupathi
Simla
Mussourie
Rajesh Khanna
Do not like
Gavaskar
Ravi Shastri
Donald Trump
Sharukh Khan - overpaid, undertalented! Certainly Successful.
Saif
Chandigarh
Dilip Kumar
Do not like at all
Indian Counselor Office New York - I guess it will be the same for many Indian Embassies/Offices across the world. Expect a full rant on this soon.
Showing posts with label Bombay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bombay. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Big B or SRK!
So, there is this great debate, the rivalry, the rancour, the hate, the competition between the men themselves as well as in media....... WHO's bigger, better, taller, fresher, newer and deserves the title of "Bollywood King"
To me. the debate is over even before it begins. Big B is the Badshah of the Bollywood, the Sultan of Bombay, the man who fought through it all and survived. A true test of any person is the adversities he/she weathers, the storms s/he comes through and, the maturity of actions displayed, on every single account, BIG B stands taller than srk, and literally too he stands way above this short guy.
To be fair, there are some similarities in the way both came on the hindi movie scene. Amongst that I think the Timing was a big factor -Being at the right place at the right time;
Big B - when the audience was looking for an angry young man
srk - when audience wanted to see all the shades of a man's inner personality. No black and white alone - they wanted to see all the shades of grey that exist in a person. A good evil, if you would.
Both were lucky too; they got good breaks to begin their careers and soon the audience ensured that they reached the dizzy heights of Desi Stardom.
Similarities kind of end there though, AB went through much adversity - a devastating accident on the set of movie ( I think it was "Coolie' but I could be wrong), getting into politics to help out a friend (who turned out to be a ungrateful wretch of a man), fall of the business he was trying to build (AB productions or what ever the corporate avatar his company was) and after that relentless political witch hunting - attacked personally with attacks on his family ( remember the IT raid they endured!) and still he stands tall in what his adversaries would like make live ruins for him/his family. An Endearing man but more importantly an endearing man.
On the other hand, srk has virtually enjoyed a breakaway free run every which way. I personally think that its also because he was indirectly or directly supported by the infamous "D Company" - the Dubai mutherf!%~@# responsible for killing thousands of innocents during the Mumbai blasts. Now obviously, there is no published report that announces this support, but you look at the uninterrupted run srk has at the bollywood and you wonder, who's supporting him so well that there is never even a whimper of anything bad about srk, indeed if anything does come up, that reflects poorly on srk, it is made to go away so fast that its off the news even before you realize that its a news to begin with - e.g. the story of the bungalow he bought on the sea face and then wanted to radically change the architecture and add add monstrous expansions to this heritage building.
BTW, I don't wish to take away anything from his popularity, great success at the box office or his business acumen. He has certainly earned it. Even though, I have reservations on his limited acting skills (for eample the fact that he has the same canned laughter irrespective of the role, the situation or the kind of movie) BUT considering the fact that there are hundreds of star sons/daughters who have worst skills despite being given multiple chances, and are still around, I think he's much better.
I wish I could go on and on but time is short and I must stop. In conclusion, srk doesn't hold a torch to the BIG B and yet the public debates oops I mean media propaganda continues to tout srk as the king, I don't blame them, as Murphy's law says; The race doesn't always go to the fastest or strongest horse but that's the way to bet. Big B may be stronger or faster but go ahead and bet on the short man.
To me. the debate is over even before it begins. Big B is the Badshah of the Bollywood, the Sultan of Bombay, the man who fought through it all and survived. A true test of any person is the adversities he/she weathers, the storms s/he comes through and, the maturity of actions displayed, on every single account, BIG B stands taller than srk, and literally too he stands way above this short guy.
To be fair, there are some similarities in the way both came on the hindi movie scene. Amongst that I think the Timing was a big factor -Being at the right place at the right time;
Big B - when the audience was looking for an angry young man
srk - when audience wanted to see all the shades of a man's inner personality. No black and white alone - they wanted to see all the shades of grey that exist in a person. A good evil, if you would.
Both were lucky too; they got good breaks to begin their careers and soon the audience ensured that they reached the dizzy heights of Desi Stardom.
Similarities kind of end there though, AB went through much adversity - a devastating accident on the set of movie ( I think it was "Coolie' but I could be wrong), getting into politics to help out a friend (who turned out to be a ungrateful wretch of a man), fall of the business he was trying to build (AB productions or what ever the corporate avatar his company was) and after that relentless political witch hunting - attacked personally with attacks on his family ( remember the IT raid they endured!) and still he stands tall in what his adversaries would like make live ruins for him/his family. An Endearing man but more importantly an endearing man.
On the other hand, srk has virtually enjoyed a breakaway free run every which way. I personally think that its also because he was indirectly or directly supported by the infamous "D Company" - the Dubai mutherf!%~@# responsible for killing thousands of innocents during the Mumbai blasts. Now obviously, there is no published report that announces this support, but you look at the uninterrupted run srk has at the bollywood and you wonder, who's supporting him so well that there is never even a whimper of anything bad about srk, indeed if anything does come up, that reflects poorly on srk, it is made to go away so fast that its off the news even before you realize that its a news to begin with - e.g. the story of the bungalow he bought on the sea face and then wanted to radically change the architecture and add add monstrous expansions to this heritage building.
BTW, I don't wish to take away anything from his popularity, great success at the box office or his business acumen. He has certainly earned it. Even though, I have reservations on his limited acting skills (for eample the fact that he has the same canned laughter irrespective of the role, the situation or the kind of movie) BUT considering the fact that there are hundreds of star sons/daughters who have worst skills despite being given multiple chances, and are still around, I think he's much better.
I wish I could go on and on but time is short and I must stop. In conclusion, srk doesn't hold a torch to the BIG B and yet the public debates oops I mean media propaganda continues to tout srk as the king, I don't blame them, as Murphy's law says; The race doesn't always go to the fastest or strongest horse but that's the way to bet. Big B may be stronger or faster but go ahead and bet on the short man.
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