Pooja needs pet puja
By Madhur Mittal

SHE’D do well to slam the brakes on before her buggy meets up with a casualty situation, y’know. Because, as it is, she has lost control of the wheel. Like, already.

It’s Pooja Batra I’m talking about, folks. She’s losing weight in such a tearing hurry — as if it were going out of fashion. Trust me when I say that I had a hard time recognising her at the Laawaris bash hosted by the Venus guys at the Juhu Centaur. I mean, she had virtually slimmed to half her size... a far ‘cry’ from the voluptuous woman in Viraasat. As a matter of fact, Pooja was looking so gaunt that all her bones were on view like 3-D X-ray! Evidently, anorexia nervosa has caught up with her and I honestly doubt if she is eating anything at all...

I’m concerned. And worried. Because, in case Pooja becomes any thinner, she’ll have to pass a place twice to cast a shadow once!

Smell a burn?

Incidentally, at the same do, Shah Rukh Khan walked in looking pretty deadbeat. He said something about "a lousy, long flight" all right... but there was (much) more to it than just a plane. In fact, ‘plainly’ putting it, the Shah was totally fagged out, drained, strained and simply burnt out.

Smell something....?

Unfortunately (or, maybe fortunately?) I couldn’t corner him to find out facts. For the reason that he hurried out as quickly as he’d come in. Shucks.

Will anything do?

Viewers (and voyeurs) of Hindi films have been zapped by Tara Deshpande’s attractive appearances in Bombay Boys and Bada Din. She looks glamorous and acts convincingly. There is a certain naturalness to her wantonness! Okay?

"But I am still not being recognised as a star who can join the big league," she laments. "Why? Why not? I can perform... and run a billion guys wild... asking for more of "Dolly’, as they did in the screeings of Bombay Boys! Right now, I have this (uncomfortable) feeling that cine buffs think I’m game for ‘anything’ who’s hot to trot!"

Power to kill

A question that Salman Khan wants answered by his (worst) critics is: "Very often, while watching a preview of some film — not necessarily my own — with journalists and film critics, I’ve found them laughing and sniggering even when there’s nothing comic happening on the screen. Do they think acting is a joke? Does any of them have it in him or her to be able to do even an iota of what the hero and the heroine have to portray emotionally? Or do they get a perverse thrill knowing that, with a three-line sentence, they have the power to kill any movie... howsoever good it may be? "I mean, like, what’s so funny, huh?"

Anybody who feels like raising a hand to respond, please do so now!

Gustad becomes ‘Ustad’

Incidentally, there is an obvious high that director Kaizad Gustad (of Bombay Boys) is on... and it’s not doing him any good, for sure. Even if his (long) locks of hair resemble those of Moses, there’s no need for him to hand down terse commandments, anyway!

So far, it was only the unit members and the few scribes who’d had a brush with him that were ‘bristling’! But now the amicable chairperson of the Censor Board, Asha Parekh, the veteran actress, is also up in arms against this self styled ustad... and his badmouthing the decision to re-censor the film. "These kind of belligerent, young upstarts think they are God... just because a crude film pulls in crowds only interested in cheap, vulgar thrills!"