The bizarre spat between Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut is taking new turns by the minute and no one is coming out looking any good.
Kangana has been claiming that she and Hrithik had a relationship going for a long time. Hrithik says there is nothing of that sort. Kangana says she has thousands of emails from Hrithik to prove her point. Hrithik says that some imposter made the e-mail account and sent them in his name and deluded Kangana.
The issue is now a criminal complaint, with the police investigating. Meanwhile, newspapers are seeing a blizzard of leaks from both camps. One of the latest was a photo that showed Kangana and Hrithik cosying up to each other, thus apparently proving their relationship. It was published in many newspapers.
But soon another photo came to light which showed that the photo had been taken at a party in Hrithik’s place where even his then wife Sussanne was present. And there were photos of him taking such pictures with practically all the guests there.
Sussanne too has come out in public defending him and saying that the photo painted a false perception. So, while earlier, public support was with Kangana for standing up to a superstar’s whims, it is not slowly moving towards Hrithik.
Now there is another twist in the tale that further does no good to Kangana. Her ex-boyfriend Adhyayan Suman has made some rather shocking allegations. He is the son of the actor Shekhar Suman and at one point had started on a promising career in Bollywood as a hero but soon fizzled out into a has-been. It was in the beginning of his career that he and Kangana acted in a movie together and also got into a relationship. He now claims to have been both mentally and physically harassed by Kangana and paints a picture of her as someone who is unstable and opportunistic. She would be abusive to both him and his parents and even slapped him in public. He even claims to have been told that she was using black magic to harm him and that the relationship ruined him and turned him into an alcoholic.
The interview has sent social networking abuzz but there are still many who believe that this is all a slander campaign against Kangana. Meanwhile it was also reported that Kangana and Hrithik have called a truce, organised by common friends because the issue had gone completely out of control.
A drug story
In the early 90s, Mamta Kulkarni was one of the leading actresses in Bollywood but her career waned gradually and before long she had disappeared. Then people came to know that she had in fact gotten married to an underworld gangster called Vicky Malhotra.
While that might sound unusual, it is often forgotten that till the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993 engineered by Dawood Ibrahim, Bollywood was intimately connected and funded by the underworld and actors wore their friendships with gangsters as badges of honour.
But the Mamta story has now taken a turn for the worse with she herself being implicated in a huge bust when the police seized narcotics reportedly worth Rs2,000 crores. Her husband is said to be behind it but the police also hint that Mamta has a role in it. She has denied it, giving interviews by phone from Kenya to the media rubbishing the accusations.
Sports ruckus
Salman Khan should write a book on how to get into controversies, considering he keeps running into them and this even though his behaviour over the last many years has been quite impeccable.
The latest is him being appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador to the Olympics contingent of sportsmen who will represent India. This would have been quite understandable because a superstar can help in creating awareness about sports and thus draw much needed resources in a country where only cricket gets serious money and every other sport survives hand-to-mouth.
But the appointment of Salman has agitated several sport icons like Milkha Singh, who is perhaps the country’s most famous athlete. Their objections to Salman are twofold. One is that if there was a goodwill ambassador needed, then it should have been a sportsman who has brought glory to the country by his performance.
The second reason was more pertinent. They argued that even if a movie star was needed, then it should not have been Salman because of the numerous legal cases against him. It makes him an unfit role model for something like this.
There is also the timing of Salman’s appointment. His movie Sultan is slated for release in July and he plays a wrestler in it. So there are allegations that move could be sly tactic to promote the movie using the Olympics. Meanwhile the man who came in defence of Salman was his father Salim Khan. He launched a furious tirade in Twitter against those who were speaking against Salman. He wrote that Milkha Singh should feel grateful that Bollywood made a movie on him, bringing him out of oblivion and that sportsmen performed because of sports lovers like them. But it probably only further fuelled the controversy.
Loose talk
Tiger Shroff did well with his debut movie Heropanti and his second Baaghi has just hit the screens. While stardom is always welcome, it comes with a few niggles, as he is learning.
For one, you need to be really careful of what you say. You might think a comment is harmless and smart but it can come back to bite you. Recently, in an interview to a news website, to a question on who he wanted for a life partner, Tiger replied, “I will get married to a girl from the village. When I reach home, I want a massage so that I can get relaxed. She should stay at home, keep the house clean and give me home-cooked food. I like girls who are the housewife-type.”
Soon there were angry feminist responses which accused him of antiquated ideas of what a wife should be. Tiger immediately went into damage control mode and said that he had been misquoted. He also tweeted, “I am totally for women empowerment and equality and always talk about how they are as strong or stronger than men.”
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SPAT: It has been reported in some places that Kangana and Hrithik have called a truce, organised by common friends because the issue had gone completely out of control.
