Indian Idol epilogue - Javed sahib satisfied

This little piece is kind of sweet. It claims that Javed Akhtar wasn't entirely confident in his wife's ability to take his place on Indian Idol. Javed sahib now knows that he needn't have doubted her. "I guess there're some people who get it right, no matter what they do. Shabana is one of them," he said. "Now I'm apprehensive they might ask her to take my place on Indian Idol."

I hope not ... then I'd have to force myself to watch more of the show.

Hat tip to Darshana for the link.

Ek bahut hi special guest

Here is a link to a post on India-forum that itself contains links to all 13 segments on Friday night's installment of Indian Idol 3, on which Shabana Azmi was a guest judge. (There is a password provided in the India-forum post, down after the thirteenth link.)

I haven't watched beyond the first segment yet - I am not a big fan of these performance shows - but as I said in my previous post on the subject, Shabana ji looks fabulous and her appearance was met with enthusiastic reviews.

So watch the videos, and let me know what you think.

"Main tujhe bita ke", Fakira (1976)

In part because of the trajectory of Shabana Azmi's career, and in part because of what's available on YouTube, my Shabana-gaana offerings are generally focused upon Shabana ji's earliest work. No matter, since the 1970s are full of adorable exemplars of proto-Shabana in her masala heroine avatar.

The 1976 masala potboiler Fakira is a rich source - the songs are cute and romantic, with lots of rolling in the grass and dancing around trees, and between the elfen young Shabana and the gorgeous Shashi Kapoor there is plenty of pretty to go around. Today you can watch "Main tujh ko bita ke," a tender song with a picturization that is humorous and even downright naughty for its time. Though the picturization doesn't shy away from the details of the couple's romp, the clip doesn't show you what the film does the next morning - the bed broken in two as a result of the evening's frolic!



Enjoy the song, and watch out for something that looks an awful lot like a real kiss ...

A glimpse of Indian Idol

Following up on my previous post, it appears that Shabana ji's guest appearance on Indian Idol 3 is in Javed sahib's place, rather than by his side. Below is a picture from the set, sent to me by a friend (click for a full size picture). I'll update again if I figure out a way to watch the show.


ETA: Rave reviews. And another picture (with Anu Malik):



Looking fabulous, of course. And another rave review.

Shabana ji to accompany Javed sahib on Indian Idol

For the past couple of months Shabana ji's husband, the writer Javed Akhtar, has been serving as a judge on the television series Indian Idol 3. I have not been following the show - as much as I would love to practice my Hindi-Urdu comprehension by listening to Javed sahib speak all day long, I have to place some limits on the amount of time I spend on things filmi, and a performance contest like II3, even with Javed sahib's formidable presence, just doesn't have enough to hook me.

Toss Shabana ji into the mix, though, and you bet I'll be watching.

I learned yesterday that this week Shabana ji will sit alongside her husband as a guest judge. The show is airing tonight, tomorrow, and the next day in India and on certain satellite channels. I don't have direct access to it myself, but the show's official website seems pretty generous with posting clips, and there may be other on-line sources as well. When I find the best ways to watch the episode, I'll be back to let you know.

Gratuitous screencap: La Nuit Bengali (1988)

A friend gave me this screencap from La Nuit Bengali - I haven't seen the film, and don't plan to see it soon, but oh my stars and garters Shabana ji looks super lovely.

Inauspicious debut

From a wonderful interview published in Little India magazine earlier this year, Shabana Azmi's first performance as an actor:

Well actually my acting career started and didn't quite take off at the age of three. I was enacting the nursery rhyme "Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle/ the cow went over the Moon." I was playing the cow. Alas. instead of going over the moon I fell on the moon, who was another three-year-old girl. She got up and gave me a tight slap. I slapped her in return and the curtains had to be brought down hastily!

Read the rest of the interview here.

"Sajnaji vaari vaari", Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (2007)

After Shabana-gaana posts from the 70s and 80s, I wanted to show you something much more recent - "Sajnaji vaari vaari" from Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. The clips of this song that are available on YouTube are really poor quality. I'm posting this link, but it really doesn't do this adorable song any justice.

(ETA: The clip I linked has been removed from YouTube, as sometimes happens. I found another one - even worse quality - but no guarantees it will be up for long. Sorry! )

Click here to watch.

I'm running out of decent YouTube clips and I'm only up to the third installment of shabana-gaana. I may have to take matters into my own hands ...

Charlie Rose interviews Shabana Azmi, March 2006

A reader in Portugal sent me a link to Shabana ji's appearance on the Charlie Rose show last year. This 22-minute interview is highly recommended viewing; it's a nice introduction both to Shabana the actor and Shabana the activist. I hope it will make plain at least some of the reasons that this blog exists.

Watch it here.

Some highlights:

• The discussion of Arth and Paar, while stock stuff of Shabana interviews, is always fun to hear.

• The description of the "commune" apartment in which Shabana ji's girlhood was spent. I heard a little about this in Kaifi aur main but my Urdu wasn't up to snuff and I didn't understand much of it.

• Shabana ji's comments about the Imam of Jama Masjid - especially that parachuting him into a war zone "would solve his problems as well as our own."

Please watch, and let me know what you think.

Some fluff in The Hindu: hero worship meets reality

The Hindu has a piece about some of the less award-worthy stuff Shabana ji has been up to lately. Some of these endeavors are the ones I try to ignore, as they don't fit the idealized, pedestal-mounted facsimile of my idol that dwells in my mind. I certainly was bitten by hubris when Shabana ji appeared at a promotional news conference for Jet Airways alongside Shah Rukh Khan ... not weeks after I had grumpily criticized Shah Rukh Khan for doing so many commercial endorsements.

But the truth is - a truth I am sometimes bidden to acknowledge - that whatever else she may be, Shabana ji is also a movie star, and there's a lot of that territory that strikes me somewhere between irrelevant and distasteful. Today The Hindu reminds me of some of these things. No matter - there's still plenty to admire (including the very nice picture, reproduced here, that accompanied the article), and I'll post some more about that later today.

And at least Shabana ji is honest and expressive about her motivations:

In the recent past, her first surprise appearance was for a TV commercial, before she zapped everyone with a ramp walk for friend and designer Anuradha Vakil. The detergent ad where she appeals to the nation to save two buckets of water every day by using a washing powder came as a surprise — suddenly there she was on TV, wearing a kadak istri sari, pallu tucked in the waist, flower in her hair and holding a plastic bucket of water. "I did it because they gave me good money, but the advertisement also spoke about water conservation. Water is something I'm concerned about, and the ad helped create an awareness."

Read the rest of the article here. And I'll add that my discomfort with the more mercenary side of Shabana ji's dance card says more about me than it does about her.