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Ali's Notes

Woh kaun hai?
What do you make of a scary story like this, a story told a little before I decide to switch off the light in my room? A known voice calls and asks me to take whatever he is saying seriously. "This is not a ghost story. I am not telling you this story to disturb you. I have not even tried to make the story sound like a scary story but I strongly feel that I must tell you this story before I go to sleep tonight," the voice says. I ask the voice to carry on. His story (and the story is growing more and more popular in Bandra).

He says he (and so many others are saying) has seen scared people talk about this story in and around Pali Hill. It’s the story of a woman who comes outside Sunil Dutt’s now demolished bungalow every night at 11.30 p.m., just half an hour before midnight. She is dressed in a stark white sari which covers her face. She walks alone in the lane outside Dilip Kumar’s old bungalow (which was his home before he married Saira Banu and shifted to her palatial bungalow), then walks outside Saira Banu’s bungalow which is protected by a strong posse of policemen in uniform and other security men in civilian clothes on the alert because "the God of acting" is under all kinds of threats to his life. They don’t see her. She stops a few steps after passing the place where Sunil Dutt’s bungalow once stood. She quickly builds a make-shift house for herself, prepares a place and goes off to sleep. She wakes up exactly at three-thirty in the morning and walks away, following the same steps she had traced that night. She doesn’t talk to anyone. No one, not even the tough policemen on duty try to talk to her. They are scared stiff. Some say it is the late Nargis Dutt who comes to see all that is happening outside the bungalow where she spent the best days of her life. Investigations, clues, clarifications? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’w know what to make of a story like this. Who knows? Contact the woman in white if you know.

More about Mrs Nene
The story, one of the greatest success stories, seems to have suddenly taken a sweet little twist. It seems like only yesterday when Madhuri was Madhuri Dixit, the reigning diva of Hindi cinema. And marriage and that rich mangalsutra and all the changes that come with marriage seemed to be a distant dream. The people were asking how long she would wait to tie the knot. She didn’t give them a chance to keep asking questions. She finished playing the best part of her innings. She then cut down on her assignments and people were asking questions again. Was she preparing to say farewell to films? Was she about to take that one big and bold step and contemplating marriage? Some in their anxiety and overwhelming excitement even said she had secretly married a doctor in America and the wilder and naughty ones even said she had secretly married Rakesh Nath (also known as Rikku) for the last eight years. The ever so sensible Madhuri wanted to put an end to all these speculations, questions and creating of new stories. It took her just four trips to America to find the ultimate solution. Her brother, Ajit, introduced her to his friend, Dr Shriram Nene. The two took a liking for each other, started knowing each other. Soon the entire Dixit and Nene families knew what was happening. They also knew whatever was happening was happening for the good. Madhuri made her third trip to America within a matter of months and Ram (that’s what she calls him) and Madhuri were engaged and the fourth trip led to the marriage that rocked the industry and the world of her admirers. Madhuri still can’t understand why there was such a hoo hua about her marriage. "It was just one simple girl marrying another simple man. Believe me, never for a moment did I think that I was a big star from Mumbai who was getting married to a doctor who no one from the world I came from knew. It was just the kind of marriage I wanted and Ram is just the kind of man I wanted as my life partner, the man I was waiting for. We got married in the typical Maharashtrian style. The only difference was that we were in America and not in Mumbai. It didn’t made a very big difference to me because my entire family was with me, Rikkuji was the only guest from Mumbai. It was just like being at home," Madhuri whose glow has grown doubly after her marriage, says.

It’s all over now. One more chapter has just started in the life of Mrs Madhuri Nene. The Dr Nene who could win the woman who so many other distinguished men and trillionaires and even the man in the streets wanted to marry is expected to land in Mumbai on December 15. They will have a grand reception in Mumbai on December 18.

Madhuri will then wait for the biggest film of her career, Boney Kapoor’s Pukaar to be released. The film will have a very big say in her career, her future. She has already made it clear that she will do only some select films, even though she will have to travel between Los Angeles where she’ll settle down and Mumbai. Now is the time for some select writers to find some select subjects for this actress who has the potential to come up with some great performances. She can play some of the most challenging roles and that is what I have been waiting for as an admirer right from the day I first saw her. The Mumbai industry is normally very cruel to the girls who got married. I hope they make an exception in Madhuri’s exceptional case whose best has still to come even after eighteen long years and a super-successful career. Let’s wait and watch what happens to Mrs Nene who brought light into the lives of millions all over the world. She deserves all the light, the light which will make her brilliance shine out.

The new Rani
Where there’s a will there’s a way. I don’t know who used the phrase first but I know that it has done a world of good to people all over the world, is still doing and will always do. Take the latest case of Rani Mukerji. Everyone who knew something about her and was interested in her and her future was worried about her putting on weight after her grand success in Ghulam and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Rani didn’t know the exact reason why she put on so much weight but she was clever enough to know that she couldn’t afford to put on so much weight when only "skin and bones" was the in thing, she made it a point to lose all that flab and once she willed it and she wanted to loose weight desperately she found all the ways to find a way out. Rani today is a changed Rani, a lively, trim and with the will to look good, to overcome all the obstacles that were threatening to come in her way, to reach her goal.

Sanju’s born again
As a little boy I remembered a priest saying forty was the best time to start life. Forty was the time when a man knows where he stands and how far he can go. Like it has proved right in the case of Sanjay Dutt now. Sanjay, the son of the "messiah", Sunil Dutt was almost wiped out from the race some years ago. His story turned for the worse when he was sent to rot in jail for two and a half years for a crime which is still haunting him. It was very easy for some of the strongest men to crumble under the cruel circumstances he faced but he proved to be his father’s son, one of the greatest experts in facing vicissitudes, traumas and threats and turning up a winner every time. He was released and was determined to fight back to find his place and make life look better. He had lost three of the best years of his youth. He had to make up for time lost and he vowed he would, he said. There were filmmakers who were willing to put their trust in him and he was game and was in no mood to give them a chance to complain. And with films like Haseena Maan Jaayegi, and the more recent Vaastav and Khoobsurat he has proved more than what was expected by both admirers and critics alike. Sanjay has proved to be a phoenix more than a man these days. He is the man anyone and everyone wants now. Sanju, the man who was rejected, refused a second look, is a man who has forced people to forget his past, forgive him if they believe he has done any wrong. He is a fighting man, fit at forty, who will be wanted for a long long time. The superstitious say it’s his mother who has worked miracles for him. Some say the prayers of his fans have worked. I firmly believe it is his father and his sister, Priya, and his wife Rhea who have made him stand up and fight his battle again. Sanju should have seen his father when he was in all sorts of trouble to know what he means to his father.

A rare treasure from Pandit K Razdan
It is very rarely that I feel like believing in what the writer or the publisher of a book says about a book. It is moreso in the case of most books written about cinema. It was therefore a pleasure to see my senior and respectable colleague Pandit K Razdan calling his first ever book, "A rare book of its own kind". Yes, it is rare and calling it rare is being a little modest for the sheer effort, the exciting enthusiasm and the passion to enlighten generations of the past and the generation and the millennium to come shortly about the sheer power and the glory of Hindi cinema. It is certainly a book to be touched (have you ever touched a great book, felt the thrill of it?), to be seen, to be read and to be treasured for all time because it is a book which tells you almost everything that has happened during the last fifty years of Hindi cinema -- that’s why it’s called "The Half Century: A Mega Book".

IT thoroughly covers the fifty years of Hindi cinema through some good, vivid and moving writing which bring entire eras, companies, moves, movements, personalities and pictures come alive and talk, bring them close to you and promose to stay with you for all time. The high point of the book which is the writer’s passion personified is the magnificent, miraculous, mesmerising collection of photographs (what a collection, Panditji!).

The greatest treasure are the photographs he has been able to collect (what an effort! What junoon, near divine madness!). Every photograph is a chapter by itself, in so many cases. You have to just look at them and they take you to another world, a world where you would love to spend as much time as possible in these days when time is running at a demonic speed which is difficult to describe in words.

Pandit K Razdan is not one of those arm-chair historians or pseudo-intellectuals who claim to know all but know so very little -- thankfully. He is an acute, alert, agile and aware eye-witness to all that has happened to the world of Hindi cinema and its wonderful, good, bad, mad, sad, glad, mysterious mass of great people, the kind of people you will not find anywhere in the world, I’m sure. Pandit Razdan has been a journalist who has been very very close to all the big men and women in every sphere, close to giants, titans, pillars, phenomena who dared to make the world of Hindi films what it is today. The greatest of them shared their innermost secrets with him but he has not taken advantage of them and poured them all into his book. He has treated every subject with care, caution, affection. There is no malice, there are no assassinations in the book. Pandit K Razdan writes history with a heart.

Pandit K Razdan is a rare man himself. He has been an active journalist during the last fifty-three years. He produced Ulfut, an ambition, which was never fulfilled but which taught him more than an entire course in a university. He could have been beaten to the dust. But he was made for great things. His life took a rare turn when he turned to Shirdi Ki Sai Baba for solace. The Baba inspired him to write bhajans in the Baba’s honour and spread his message. He has written and composed fourteen major albums in honour of the Baba, albums which are a treasure for the Baba’s bhakts. He has written and composed some of the best ghazals too. A man with so many experiences has to come up with a book which is a rare treasure. His book, Half-A Century, A Mega Book is being published by himself. He is looking around for some good marketing agencies. He must find them. Passion like this can not end in pain. May the Baba fulfil all his wishes. I would also like to plead with the Baba to take some of my wishes and gift them to him. Pandit K Razdan has created a treasure which thieves would steal and not flee before leaving more than the price of the book behind. Thank you, Panditji. You don’t know what a honor you have done to this generation and the millenniums to come.