Youtube: Perfection!! Too bad it’s all doomed now. Current crop of actors n actresses is a joke. Aishwariya, Priyanka, Deepika..even all three combines can’t match the beauty, elegance, expressions of Madhubala.
-The current crop of Bollywood women are just fine — great dancers and good actors. My humble opinion (and personal taste) is just that they’re forced by current trends to be too skinny. They don’t have any body to do anything with. A slightly more zaftig girl like Parineeti Chopra (who I like a lot because she looks Greek) gets all sorts of shit and is called fat all the time. The last great female body on the Bollywood screen was the goddess Madhuri Dixit. Here she is in her kitsch-kathak number from 2002 Devdas.
…where she was pushing 40, was five months pregnant and wearing a costume that weighed 60 lbs.
And still rocking more than a decade later with Ranbir Kapoor, in Karan Johar’s 2013 Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, in the silly “Viagra” number, dancing and looking amazing. (You have to see the “making of Ghagra” video to hear Ranbir talking in that sweet, soft-spoken manner he has, about how Dixit was his first screen love, and how exciting it was to get to kiss her finally — highly recommended). She’s incredible. As is he of course.
While the “current crop” of ‘roided up, live-in-the-gym, men in Bollywood: John Abraham, Varun Dhawan, Siddharth Malhotra, even Ranbir Kapoor — seems to have benefited on screen from the extra meat, some of the women are starting to look anorexic. Then they put those stupid bikini tops on them with their saris — whereas an old-fashioned, super-tight, mid-arm choli is so much sexier — and they look even bonier.
In fact, it’s easy to argue that since the exit of Madhuri Dixit and the appearance of Hrithik Roshan (who has since totally disappeared…anyone know why?) and the emancipation of teenage girls’ libidos, men have replaced women as the primary objects of desire in Bollywood cinema. I mean, who are the sex objects in this “Radha” number below from SOTY ? Alia Bhatt ? Or Varun* and Siddharth with their kurtas unbuttoned down to their navels and their pec cleavage?
(Or is this all the work of the ‘demonic’ Karan Johar :) and his objects of desire?)
Below is my girl Parineeti (mentioned above: right, she looks Greek?) in Daawat-e-Ishq, not looking fat at all, playing opposite an absolutely spectacular-looking Aditya Roy Kapur, done up just like I like my South Asian Muslim men to be, with surma and two big silver earrings and tight, tacky polo shirts. I seem to be the only person who liked this movie; it wasn’t the greatest, but I like her and him and them opposite each other, and I’m always interested in what Bombay does with purely Muslim themes.
“Tamam, NikoBako, so are these the things you worry about on a daily basis while the whole world is going to hell?” Yeah, ok, I’m sorry. No, they’re not the only things. But nobody wants their guilty pleasures taken away from them.
Plus, I do think it’s all related. Ask me how if you’re interested. Gotta go…
* (I have a particular weakness for Varun’s kind of extra-baggy salvaria…)
Comment: nikobakos@gmail.com
–
Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 
Leave a Reply