Abhishwarya
Move over TomKat and Brangelina, Bollywood’s hottest (though I cringe when I have to say that) couple have finally made up their mind about each other. It is not as if they hadn’t as of now but were trying to play safe considering Ash and Abhishek’s not-so-successful past love lives.
But more than Ash and Jr Bachchan and respective families it was our media, which appeared extremely euphoric and ecstatic about the entire issue. It was a lazy Sunday evening and I was killing time by surfing channels and watching bits of Pyaar Ke Side Effects, which my cablewalla had put. My cablewalla does that all the time—telecasting films he considers ‘masterpiece’ (or else who on earth would like to watch Aap Ki Khaatir and Bhoot Unkle!!!).
Anyway, amidst the surfing act my eyes caught a glimpse of the ticker flash on Sahara News Mumbai which said ‘Ash aur Abhishek ki sagaai hui’. The first reaction was —yeh toh hona hi tha! What’s new in it? More than the news I wanted to find which all ‘news’ channels have managed to fish the story out considering it was a ‘BREAKING NEWS’ and I was sure by now each channel would be harping it was them who has broke the news. At that is what exactly happened. Here’s a lowdown on what news our channels had to offer…
Aaj Tak: Senior journalists Deepak Chaurasia and Punya Prasoon Bajpai were conducting a panel discussion on the growing instances of parents’ over ambitiousness over their wards till a bigger news hit them. I really don’t know what happened to the discussion but I did hear Chaurasia saying ‘we won’t be able to telecast our show Waardaat tonight because a bigger news has happened’. The next two and half hours comprised of an in-depth study of Ash and Abhishek’s proposed marriage which according to Chaurasia will be solemnised on 19th Feb and will be attended by 400 guests not even a 401th person will be included. Then there were some discussion on Ash being Manglik and how her ‘shani’ and ‘rahu’ will affect Abhishek’s career. Again he informed the viewers about the remedies that Bachchan parivar has done to get rid of Ash’s inauspicious stars.
Punya Prasun Bajpai went a step ahead giving an elaborate presentation on power play that Bollywood will now face courtesy Ash-Abhi match. How producers will be certain of returns if they sign Amitabh, Jaya, Abhishek and Ash for a project. The channel also brought in some analyst for this purpose who along with Bajpai discussed the ‘badalte huye samikaran’ in Bollywood post this alliance. Bajpai now finds a new radiance in Ash-Abhi onscreen chemistry, which according to him looks extremely convincing in Mani Ratnam’s Guru. He says the way Ash has perfomed in the film is very real and one can make out that she isn’t acting but reacting to her real life situation. (Umrao Jaan, anyone?) And not to forget a bunch of zealous reporters who were posted at various places of action ala Bachchan residence Jalsa, Allahabad and Lucknow. The icing on the cake was when political editor Prabhu Chawla, too, joined the study and gave his ‘vishesh tippanni’. He further enlightened the viewers with the piece of info that Ash wore a diamond ring given by Bachchan Jr. Wow! Abhishek gave Ash a ring on their engagement. That actually news!
IBN7: Their ticker flash read they are the one to whom Big B has confirmed the news to. According to the channel Abhi had proposed Ash in Toronto yesterday and Ash accepted the proposal. The actor then called up Big B to inform him about their decision and the engagement was a resultant to that. An ultimate case of chat proposal, pat sagaai? The channel, too, had its share of shani, rahu, ketu, mangal and kundali. The anchor in the studio and the reporters continuously exchanged info about the visitors pouring in Jalsa, decoding the mannerisms of the Bachchan family, the multiple temples visits et al. I am sure so much must not have been interpreted about General Musharraf’s body language also. If the presenter ran out of words then they threw some shots from the making of Guru and random songs from the couple’s films together.
NDTV India: This being a less agile channel as compared to its counterparts when it comes to Bollywood, was a bit late to lap this news up but once they had the reports they, too, played it up well. Shikta Deo caught hold of Adman Prahlad Kakkar—the man who had shot Ash first in the Pepsi ad some eons ago. She kept asking him about the Ash not many know and how good did Prahlad think the couple would look in the days to come. She also asked him now which are the ads that Ash and Abhishek should do now. Yeh kya sawaal tha??!!
Star News: No one can beat them when it comes to make a silly piece of report even sillier. Manish Dubey who was deputed at Jalsa kept on asking the people gathered how they felt about the entire affair, gave a lowdown about this biggest romance of filmdom. They showed clips of the previous interviews of Ash and Abhishek and how cleverly the duo had denied the alliance discussions. The channel gave every kind of evidence that they knew the story inside out. Again some look at the past love affairs of both the stars followed by present status.
Zee News: They started showing clippings of the episode of Jeena Isika Naam Hai, which featured Ash. No wonder that too was a Zee presentation. Again some back grounding and back to present bytes.
The most interesting part was none of the channels had any other piece of news showing up on the screen anywhere. The tickers, the banners everywhere it was the Abhishwarya episode. It looked as if the world was standstill in those three hours. Kudos to our enlightened, responsible and vigilant media!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Yes, incredibly daft things are happening on the media front. The online media outlets like Rediff have similarly gone bonkers.
I still remember the TomKat news.. it was everywhere… same info over and over..as if nothing else in the world was important anymore.. so annoying!!
My cousin wrote to me that people have gone bonkers and were dancing all night at Jalsa. Maa kasam!
Badhai Ho Bhai Badhai ho…I am so happy for the couple..poor couple had to go thru so much…ufffff pain, finally the day has arrived when they have got engaged….see…good things happen to good people..i still havent lost faith in karma…Lets end this here…GAWD…..enough of it..for christs sake…anything i open has news flash of them getting engaged…ENOUGH!!!! My 15 year old cousin sends me a forwarded email of them getting engaged…which has a gazillion CC’s to it….Damn it..i am annoyed…Well good that they have engaged..may god bless the couple..fine…lets forget it and move on…MEDIA…Braodcast NEWS…do not MAKE and then BROADCAST NEWS….
:(( i hate her..and i love him..so I’m not overjoyed at this.
but its bad to wish bad luck on people who are stepping into something new in life or whatever..
so if she makes him happy then ok..who am i to say anything..they dont evne know me…
hopefully she takes a backseat and realizes she shuoldnt bother wiht movies cuz it gets tiring to lookat her pretty face and non acting skills..
and him i hope he gets bigger and better
;)
I wonder who forced who into this liason…Ash nor Abhi look even the least bit interested in each other..in terms of their onscreen chem its as thanda as the sales for both Guru and Umrao Jaan combined..I hate Ash..and after Abhishek failing to impress in almost all his recent films..im not much too fond of him either..and hey..Ash rubbed off on Abhi..they were here in Toronto for the premier of Guru and i musta heard him speak in 3 different accents..just what his ladylove is known for abroad.
lol Jabina totally true with Ash’s acting skills.. but for some reason i still want to see her in provoked as i think there is a slight chance she might be good in it…that movie sounds very powerful..
ek kunwara, phir gaya maara
)
phas gaya dekho.. yeh bechaara
LOL. Period. :d
Man!!!!! Times of India headlines! Mumbai Mirror Headlines! Mumbai Mirror entertainment section headlines! Mumbai Mirror entertainment inside news! Loksatta Headlines! All goddamn people going crazy for two big DUMBOS!
Praise the lord Oliver Stone for making NBK 13 years back…
Completely dumbing down!!! Even their life has become a marketing tool!! Much like Guru…who married Aishwarya in the film to get money to start his business, here both decided to get engaged to help the business of their film. Even Daddy dearest gave thousand interviews and replied to everyone….who proposed whom,when, how…Money rules!! Not “Money” Ratnam anymore.
And that Prabhu Chawla!! OMG, he was talking complete shit. No sense at all. And people who go out for their juhu scheme ice-cream after their dinner, everyone stopped at Jalsa/Prateeksha to do their bit of naach-gana to see themselves on tv. Trust me, nobody gives a shit abt ash-abhi. Its all about coming on tv. Any topic will do.
i m not surprised that even Big B is playin along wid it givin dumbass interviews to dumbest of interviewers i hv ever seen…after all this is a marketing gimmick ..n every1 is in for it…
@ Jwalant
“My cousin wrote to me that people have gone bonkers and were dancing all night at Jalsa. Maa kasam!”
fuck did that actually hppnd…I guess boredom is reachin new heights in india..dats y ppl r resorting to such nonsense
phoenix, i agree.
i would never expect AB to stoop this low. I was shocked to see Mani Ratnam open his mouth during promotion of his film and found it odd that he had to actually talk about his film inorder to garner hype. Now this bullshit?..Wasn’t Ash-Abhi only “good friends” and “enjoyed working with each other”?..they couldnt even be interesting while pretending not to be together..Munna Bhai and Circuit have more chem and dazzle in their eyes than Ash-Abhi ever did and most likely ever will
sana
) munnabhai and circuit.. too good :D
lol sana
has anyone read the article on Mid-Day?
supposedly sales for Guru went up the day after the Ash-Abhi engagement announcement:)):))
well i bet the wedding is a day after Sarkar 3 releases:d
really :O .. man!!! i dont get it.. just for that i think i’ll just wait until the movie is out on DVD :P
now it’s the ash’s benarasi sari and her ring that’s making the news
News Reader Komal: Deepak .. O Deepak… Kya hum jaan sakte wahaan log kya kar rahe hain? Kaisa Maahol Hai wahaan? Kya Braishwarya aur Tomishek kaafi khush hai is engagement se?
Deepak: Ji haan Komal yehaan to bas “Dhoom” Machi Hai ! Main yehaan in dono ke duplicate ke saath hoon – - Ji Duplicate ji .. aapko kaisa lag raha hai yehaan … (they could have added this too !!!)
benarasi sari???