Meera’s abortion is nobody’s business
“Meera denies abortion” read the headline in a story published in The News on April 10, 2012. Whereas this piece of news might have piqued the curiosity of many and gained many clicks and views, all I felt after reading this piece was pity and shame; I felt terribly ashamed of our media. Have we stooped so low so as to humiliate and disclose details of someone’s personal life? Celebrity or not, reporting on someone’s abortion, obviously meant to be kept secret, oversteps a line and is unethical to say the least. The article mentions how Meera was repeatedly phoned and hounded, after ...
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Demi Moore and our fear of ageing
Demi Moore’s recent divorce from her younger husband, Ashton Kutcher, and subsequent trip to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction have been documented all too well in the tabloids. We read the headlines, and exclaim our shock and horror at Moore’s “pathetic” behavior. Unable to keep her much younger man, losing the battle with Mother Nature, guilty for beginning to show her true age, Moore reportedly turned to substance abuse to keep her fledgling self-confidence afloat. We can balk as much as we want at Demi Moore’s troubles, but how long can they distract us from our own insecurities? With the deluge of bad press ...
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Agneepath: Why remakes are worth it
They say you shouldn’t redo a role that Amitabh Bachchan has done before. And if the role is the character of Vijay Deenanath Chauhan in Agneepath, then the only thing you should be redoing is mulling over your decision to replay it. Hrithik Roshan went through that process of thinking and then rethinking some more, and as a Bollywood fan, I am grateful that he decided to take up the challenge. He did justice to the character of an angry young man whose sole purpose in life is to avenge the death of ...
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84th Academy Awards: Predictions, tweets & snubs
The Oscars are a time when fans, TV anchors, stylists, live bloggers, tweeters and seat-fillers (the lucky people who sit on celeb’s seats while they’re visiting the bathroom or the bar) satellite around A-list stars in the celluloid constellation known as Hollywood. Die-hard viewers host Oscar parties at home while Hollywood’s B, C and D-listers try to attend as many after-parties as they can (since they’re naturally not invited to most awards shows). It’s fun for all, whether you’re watching the show live at the crack of dawn in Pakistan’s time zone (and heading off bleary-eyed to work), or watching the ...
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Are the stars finally smiling on Imran Khan?
One can finally sense that the tide is turning and Imran Khan is being taken seriously as a political contender. It can be seen at dinner conversations, where our liberal elite are no longer taking every opportunity to ridicule his minor inconsistencies and misdemeanours or in how his party workers are slowly becoming more recognizable on television. His rallies are now being attended in the tens of thousands rather than by a few faithful hundred and it is the convergence of such elements that is propelling him towards the main stage of our nation’s politics. It is through this ...
Read Full PostAlpha male, Beta female: Which one are you?
In the animal kingdom, it’s the aggressive Alpha male of the pack that entices females in heat for procreation purposes. In other words, the rest of the males just don’t get any. Among humans, however, things have become a little more complex since the Neanderthal era, despite romantic fiction convincing readers that Alpha heroes reflect women’s ideals. In recent mass-market fiction, even Alpha heroes are required to develop modern-day Beta characteristics, like heightened sensitivity and emotions, thanks to the influence of the female heroine in the novel who ‘tames’ her man. But it isn’t always the case in the real ...
Read Full PostAisam’s love match!
It seems that golden boy Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi will be married to more than just tennis soon. The 31-year-old athlete, peacemaker and teen-girls’ pin-up of choice has reportedly cemented a rishta with long-time love, Faha Akmal Makhdum, a British-Pakistani native of Suffolk. Haq and Makhdum will be officially engaged next week and reports indicate that no fans are invited (no, that wasn’t a wind storm, it was a collection of sighs). The betrothal announcement caused a viral explosion hailing from the blogosphere and torpedoing its way to the twittersphere, to the simultaneous clickety-clicks of text messagers and facebookers across Pakistan and ...
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Indian until proven guilty: Adnan Sami can’t buy his way out
You know him for his many marriages, including the one with Pakistani female actor Zeba Bakhtiyar. You know him for skipping Pakistan, going over to India and rocking the Indian entertainment industry with his music to the extent that an article in Times of India termed him as “the most successful; face in non—film music in India” in 2002. You also know him for his miraculous weight loss of 107kg within a year. And now, you will know him for being in legal trouble for owning eight flats and five car parking spaces in Mumbai. According to a notice issued by the ...
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The wicked women of Bigg Boss IV
It started for me three weeks ago – while channel hopping looking for something entertaining to watch on television at home, I came across an Indian channel showing an intensely heated argument between some celebrities hailing from popular Star Plus soaps. Hoping for something interesting, I got comfortable on my couch and was drawn into the fourth season of Big Boss. Whilst undoubtedly slapstick lowbrow entertainment, this show still tends to keep people glued to the screen as it unravels the domestic affairs, romantic flings, feuds and rivalries of the various housemates. It is a real-life soap opera, currently filled ...
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Be nice to comedians and maybe they’ll stay
The other day a friend of mine spotted a local standup comedian at the supermarket at the cashier next to us and did, what she thought, was the nonchalant head tilt in his direction and the excited whisper to me. I told her she should go say hi but I guess she was shy or something. Or that no one did that sort of thing unless the said person was a high paid celebrity wearing dark glasses and surrounded by security guards and paparazzi. This guy was wearing thick framed glasses and paying his grocery bill, alone. I told her ...
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