BEYOND THEIR PRIME: Kareena Kapoor (left) and Priyanka Chopra.
Recently, there was a report that a brand that Kareena Kapoor endorsed had decided to replace her with Priyanka Chopra. One would think that this is not good news for Kareena. If the replacement had been by someone from the younger generation then it wouldn’t matter so much, but Priyanka is actually from the same age group.
And while both are beyond their prime, Kareena’s marriage seems to have made her complacent about her career while Priyanka is on a completely different trajectory having reinvented herself with some success as a pop singer while also doing offbeat roles like Barfi which gets rave reviews.
But while Kareena’s last two movies, Satyagraha and Gori Tere Pyar Mein, were unmitigated flops, there might be a couple of silver linings in the horizon. Her next movie Singham Returns, is a sequel to the blockbuster Singham. It is directed by Rohit Shetty, the man with the Midas touch in Bollywood. And in all probability it will be a big hit though, given that it is a movie all about its hero Ajay Devgn, how much it will bolster up Kareena is a question mark.
The other big news that came out recently was that she will be starring opposite Salman Khan in a movie he is producing titled Bajrangi Bhaijaan. It is directed by Kabir Khan and the last time he and Salman came together in Ek Tha Tiger it was a really big blockbuster. That Salman chose to cast Kareena might also be due to the fact that the heroine in his last movie, Jai Ho, was a new face and it didn’t do too well.
A squashed rumour
It is now some time since Arjun Kapoor gave an interview in which he spoke about how the only really serious relationship that he has had was with Salman Khan’s sister Arpita. But there has been another somewhat unsavoury gossip item that has been following him around for a while. It has been said that some time back he also had a relationship with Malaika Arora, Salman’s sister-in-law and wife of Arbaaz Khan. Apparently, the two had become close after Arjun’s break up with Arpita and it had led to a serious issue for the entire family.
Arjun was even asked about this in an interview some time back and gave an unusual explanation of why this was completely baseless. He said that if it had been true then Salman would have killed him by now. And more recently, the woman in question, Malaika Arora, was also asked the same question. She also said that it was nothing more than a figment of imagination and that she didn’t feel necessary to respond to it.
Family affirmation?
The Kapoors — as in the Rishi, Neetu and son Ranbir branch of them — were a cosy unit until there was news that Ranbir was scouting for an apartment where he could have more privacy. One of the reasons was rumoured to be Rishi Kapoor’s not-so-indiscrete comments some time back at a television show about the girls who come visiting their home for Ranbir.
And in which he added a little joke that each of them didn’t know that the others were also coming. In any case, with Ranbir now taking his relationship with Katrina very seriously, it was going to be a matter of time before they took it to the next level. Even if officially they don’t make it public, it is possible that the apartment will be shared. Or it could mean a marriage on the far horizon.
Naturally, one might expect Ranbir’s parents to not be very happy about Katrina thus weaning their son away. But things seem to be getting better. It is still not clear how Rishi Kapoor, a volatile personality, views his son’s relationship but Ranbir’s mother seems to building bridges with a potential daughter-in-law.
Recently, she and Katrina were spotted having dinner together. Ranbir and the director Ayan Mukherji who is a close family friend were also present. Tongues have immediately started wagging that the family has given its stamp of approval to the relationship.
Death and defamation
The controversy over the death of Jiah Khan, the young actress who was found hanging in her apartment last year, doesn’t seem like it will go away anytime soon. She had blamed her boyfriend Sooraj Pancholi in the suicide note, but Jiah’s mother Rabbiya has been leading a one-woman crusade to convince the world that it was murder and not suicide. Since last June when Jiah died, her mother has been knocking on legal doors and also running a publicity campaign again Sooraj.
But the allegations have tended to go overboard sometimes and the media stopped giving it too much importance. Also the fact that she tweeted about trying to get in touch with Jiah’s spirit through a medium didn’t help her cause. And while most people understand her grief, many also think that she has become obsessed with the idea that her daughter did not take her own life as the suicide note indicates. On Sooraj’s side his mother Zareena Wahab has been equally relentless in countering the negative publicity coming their way.
Recently, Rabbiya scored another victory of sorts when a court which was hearing her plea ordered the case to be looked at by the Central Bureau of Investigation. But then Pancholi family decided that they had also had enough and decided to go on the offensive. And so they have now filed a defamation case against Rabbiya asking for Rs 100 crore in damages for maligning their reputation.
In interviews Sooraj’s father Aditya Pancholi and Zareena say that among her many defamatory acts Rabbiya has also made tweets that call Aditya a drug peddler. They had sent a legal notice earlier and if she had apologised they wouldn’t have filed the case. They too wanted the CBI to do a thorough investigation if only to prove Sooraj’s innocence.
