Fakir Hassen Book

8/8/2019 Fakir Hassen Book

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This isa

Gauteng 1860 Legacy Foundation project

Fakir Hassan has written a book titled 150 Bollywood Encounters the South African Connection . The book reflects on more than 150 people from theIndian entertainment industry that I have met over the years. It also contains lotsof pictures, most of them of South Africans with the artists.

EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK 150 BOLLYWOOD ENCOUNTERS by FAKIR HASSEN

I have always believed that I have been very lucky to have jobs whichcoincided with my passion for the Indian entertainment industry, oftentelling family and friends who ask about my hobbies that my job is myhobby.

Why are you pushing yourself to the limit and insisting on engaging in allthese live appearances and performances, rather than taking it easy nowand assuming a less strenuous role as an international ambassador for theIndian film industry through the speeches you deliver to rapt audiences?I wanted to know from Amitabh Bachchan.

Undeterred by the No Smoking signs in the room, Shahrukh just puffedaway during the session without even the courtesy of a May I? to themedia and some fans present, promptly emptying the sweets in a bowl onthe table when he realised that there was no ashtray in the room.


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Removing his belt, and almost half unzipping his trousers, ShahrukhKhan threatened to drop them to show everyone that he was very much aMuslim.

I first had the rare and unique pleasure of joining actress, politician andsocial activist Shabana Azmi on the same platform as world icon and thefather of the new democratic South Africa Nelson Mandela in Cape Townsoon after his release from 27 years of imprisonment on Robben Island asa political prisoner.

Of all the positive remarks made by many, those by Sushmita Sen and

Mithun Chakraborthy are the only ones that I consider, even after all theseyears, to have been very genuinely and honestly made about me byBollywood stars.

Priyanka Chopra during her debut at the IIFA Awards in Sun City shortlyafter she had won the Miss World crown in 2000, left me wonderingwhether the belief about beauties sometimes having no brains was true.Priyanka did a very bad job of compering the event, fluffing her script

despite is being visible to the whole audience on a huge autocue high upin front of her. How wrong Priyanka would prove us to be as she went onto mature into a highly talented actress with hugely acclaimed hits.

Whoever had assisted Celina Jaitley with her makeup at the time shouldhave been a little more cautious, because she glistened under a thicklayer like a Barbie doll fresh off the plastic presses.

On every occasion that I have encountered Jaya Bachchan, she was theone firmly in control behind the scenes, seemingly dictating the conditionsunder which the better known members of her family would appear onpublic platforms.

I have the rather dubious honour of having had to run behind Reena Roywith her lipstick and compact as she ran towards the stage when thecompere called her name at the Standard Bank Arena in Johannesburg.


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Aamir Khan immediately struck me as being destined for far greaterthings than just playing the teenage lover running around trees andflirting with young actresses although this was to prove true only manyyears later.

Anil Kapoor has a rather onerous title for a Bollywood actor that of being an official goodwill ambassador for South Africa. What he hasactually done about that in the four years or so since President ThaboMbeki announced this is still unclear.

Suniel Shettys insinuation of organised crime having stolen his luggageupset airport authorities who had launched concerted efforts to wipe outincidents of luggage being tampered with ahead of the expected influx of tourists for the FIFA World Cup.

There were no airs and graces and no high and mighty attitude aboutinterrupting the shooting schedule. Kamal Haasan himself walked over towherever I was on the sprawling sets each time he got a break.

Fardeen Khan called on the stukkies (a slang term in Afrikaansgenerally considered derogatory used by some South African Indians todescribe women) in the audience to clap for him, offending a number of women in the audience in the process even if some did laugh at hisstatement.

Salman Khan popped into the Global Bollywood Music store in Fordsburg just before a show in Johannesburg. He said absolutely nothing during hisfew minutes there except to ask hostess Femida Umarjee for a glass of Coke which she of course obliged with. He never took his cap off, stoodwith arms resting on a cabinet almost all the time with slightly dazedeyes, and then left.

Govindas command of English was almost nil as he kept turning to hiswife to interpret my questions. She had a better knowledge of the


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language, and it was clear that she was a strong guiding force andinfluence in Govindas life.

When Rajesh Khanna came in with flaming orange hair and a matchinglong kurta pyjama suit looking like a priest, I said I did not know who itwas. Zarina whispered into my ear to avoid embarrassing me beforeMalaysian colleagues that it was Rajesh Khanna, and I had to look again tomake him out.

At the airport in Lucknow, I already had a boarding pass but wasrepeatedly asked to wait in the lounge by officials as all the other

passengers boarded until I became panicky when there were just tenminutes left to the scheduled departure time whereupon I approached asenior manager. He then escorted me onto the plane where the limitednumber of seats was already taken up. I found myself standing at theback of the plane as Raj Babbar occupied the seat that I had beenallocated.

For most of the rest of the show, Chunkey Panday and his friend Sajid

Nadiadwala just hammed it, running on and off the Sun City stage withsilly items that were clearly unrehearsed and just for their own egos.

The comic duo of entertainment has been re-defined with the advent of Boman Irani and Riteish Deshmukh.

Shakti Kapoor was booed and jeered as he stumbled across the stage,obviously totally inebriated, and almost made the fan fall off her crutchesbefore she was helped by a stage hand. The disappointed and tearful fanlater said she never wanted to see him again.

Before hundreds of families including children at the Chatsworth Stadiumin Durban, Shakti dropped his pants and showed them his behind as helaunched a verbal tirade full of expletives against journalists who hadwritten scathing attacks about his earlier antics.


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A self-confessed street hawker of pirated cassettes alongside the fruitand vegetables that he eked a living from, Gulshan Kumar startedthinking about why nobody was exploiting the market for so much music if the costs were lowered without dropping the quality.

I asked Lata Mangeshkar whether she would not consider re-recordingsome of her great hits of the past in her own voice again using the newtechnology that was available to produce them in higher technical qualitythan had been the case in the past. Nahin! Kabhi Nahin! (Never! Neverever!) was the very emphatic and immediate answer from Lata.

When RD Burman arrived on South African shores with a host of artistsfor one of the first shows of its kind after many decades, he brought withhim a repertoire of his hits from the sixties and seventies only, believingthat South Africans had been deprived of his music after that because of apartheid era isolation.

There is no doubt that Sonu Nigam is one of the top Indian playbacksingers even with so many new voices surfacing these days. But on

almost every occasion that I have met Sonu or seen him in action, hecame across as having a kind of chip on the shoulder in a constant hungerto remain in the headlines.

The Sa Re Ga Ma Pa contest became quite controversial when it emergedthat it had been rushed and that a South African citizen of Pakistani originfrom Pretoria would represent the African continent at the finals inMumbai.

Karan Johar has revolutionized the face of Indian cinema. Despite hispreference for shooting in the US, especially New York, Karan's uniquestyle of filmmaking has endeared him to millions across the globe.

The sleaze issue came up again later when Lara Dutta appearedfrequently in a Bunny Girl outfit in a casino and Jiah Khan stepped out of the sea in a micro bikini in the Bollywood film Houseful. This promptedBrijlall Ramguthee, Editor of Post, to commission me to write a piece for


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the front page, which also showed that the Indian attitude towards sleazehad changed.

Being repeatedly hit for a six by actor Harman Baweja in the film Victorywas not exactly his idea of a debut in movies, South African cricketcaptain Graeme Smith said.

Some media colleagues and I were kept waiting twice in succession forhours for interviews arranged with some big stars who failed to honourtheir commitments. On the second occasion, we were finally offered a

junior star, and we declined to interview him. After consultation with

media colleagues, I wrote to Sabbas Joseph at WizCraft (IIFA) to requestthat they impress on the artists that we as media in South Africa expectthe same courtesy and respect that they demand of us in keeping toappointments.

Throwing around a ball and donning a football shirt brought to her, PreityZinta threatened to go onto the field but only if she could get some shorts,which nobody seemed able to find.

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The entire lowdown on this and more in the book

150 BOLLYWOOD ENCOUNTERS BY FAKIR HASSEN

Available at all branches of Global Bollywood Music and leadingbooksellers or contact [email protected]

Documents

Fakir Hassen Book