Word: bollywood
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Taken separately, the two stories on the front page of the Times of India last Monday at first seem like so much fluff. There was the long-anticipated news that actress and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai and Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan will soon tie the knot. Below it, jostling for space with a piece about the Soduku craze sweeping India, was the revelation from a new biography that the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, conducted some sort of love affair with Saraladevi Chaudhuri, the married niece of acclaimed Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore...
...globalization has brought cultural influences from abroad, which have begun to change India's own habits: satellite television, which carries soap operas with far racier storylines than the average Bollywood flick; Indian versions of Western magazines such as Marie Claire and Cosmo, which discuss sex in detail only slightly less graphic than do their sister publications abroad; even the growth of cafes, which have become the dating spot of choice for many young urban couples looking for a quiet place to sit and chat. "There has been more social change in the past 10 years than in the last...
...muckraking for hagiography. The Ambani estate is protective of its founder's legacy, but at least two members of the family gave their blessing to Guru's stars: Dhirubahi's son Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Capital, attended the Ash-Abhishek engagement party with his wife, the former Bollywood actress Tina Munim...
...paraphrase of Dhirubhai's maxim, "Only when you dream it can you do it," not to mention The Rocky Horror Show's "Don't dream it, be it.") We flash back to Gurukant's youth in a Gujurat village, then follow the mogul's progress, with some Bollywood embellishments: his marriage to Sujatha (Rai) - at first for her $25,000 dowry, then for love - and his fraternal devotion to a feisty crippled girl, Meenu (Vidya Balan), who will grow up to marry Shyam (Madhavan), the very muckraking reporter who's determined to bring Gurukant down...
...cool assurance, making room for five Rahman songs, all worth further hearings. (I can't stop humming the wedding song, and don't want to.) Dance numbers aren't crucial to a Ratnam movie, but there are a few here anyway. Ash's big number is a compendium of Bollywood visual tropes (no, let's be honest and say cliches): she dances in the rain, through a temple, by a waterfall, moving with more energy than rhythm and getting whiplashed by her pigtail. Much more satisfying is an early turn in an Istanbul night club by Bollywood bombshell Mallika Sherawat...