Momina to Kangana

We won’t go into the details of Kangana Ranaut’s bigoted attitude to life; her interviews are enough for a perceptive individual to detect that. For those who don’t know, her recent comment about a line in Mahesh Bhatt’s upcoming film Sadak 2, whose trailer has been released, is evidence enough, where she takes Pakistan’s name for no rhyme or reason. Our very own Momina Mustehsan couldn’t tolerate it, and rightly so. So she wrote back to the Bollywood actress on Twitter: “It serves no purpose but takes away from your mission to rightly get justice for Sushant Singh Rajput, fight nepotism, your own internal state politics, and curb religious hatred and prejudice. Justice cannot be served by propagating regional hatred.” Spot on, Momina M! Hope Kangana Bigot will pay heed to your suggestion.

Almost Irrfan

Sarwat Gilani in an interview has said that just before the political situation between India and Pakistan became sour, preventing artists from both sides to work with each other, someone from the team of the late Indian actor Irrfan Khan got in touch with her to offer her work in one of his forthcoming films. Unfortunately, it didn’t materialise. She exclaimed she could only imagine how amazing it would have been “just to see Irrfan Khan and how he acts”. Indeed Sarwat G. Ah, if wishes were churrails..

Indori’s Ghazal

The world of literature received a shock when, on August 11, one of the finest Urdu poets that India produced in the latter half of the 20th century, Rahat Indori, passed away after being diagnosed with Covid-19. It was nice of Ali Aftab Saeed to showcase to his fans a ghazal by Rahat sahib (Uss ki kathai aankhon mein hain) that he has composed and sung, and is part of an album that’s to come out a couple of months later. It has to be said both Ali AS’s sentiment and the composition are heartwarming. He has done justice, to a reasonable extent, to the playfulness of words used in the poem.

The Quadfather

Last week, the Nawab of Pataudi, Saif Ali Khan, announced that he and wife Kareena Kapoor-Khan are having their second child. Their first, son Taimur, is already a favourite of the paparazzi. The actor has two children — Sara and Ibrahim — from his first marriage to Amrita Singh. His sister, Soha Ali Khan, who is generally not known for her wit, reacting to the announcement made a poster meme of her brother captioning it ‘The Quadfather’. Apparently, the nawab was quad amused by it.

Pop Attack

Check out pop star Taylor Swift’s political chutzpah! The gal, in a series of tweets, has called President Donald Trump a “cheat” who is trying to stealthily win the forthcoming elections. “Trump’s calculated dismantling of USPS [US Postal Service] proves one thing: he’s chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power… His ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely. Request a ballot early. Vote early.” Girl, that is helluva swift diatribe.

Lone Runner

Actress Annabelle Wallis has claimed that Tom Cruise (with whom she’s worked in Mummy), prior to working on the project, had told her “nobody runs on screen with me.” It’s only when she was able to convince him that she could run fast, and look good, that he agreed to have sequences in the movie in which both are running. This made Thandie Newton (who was Tom C’s co-star in Mission Impossible 2) open up, and she pointed out that there’s so much mystery around the actor that she, while acting alongside him, started to feel “intimidated” by him. Hmmm… given his allegiance to the mysterious Church of Scientology that allegedly intimidates its critics, it’s no wonder few want to run with Tom C anyway. Ask ex-wife Katie Holmes.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 23rd, 2020