People
Of splits, blips and ‘twerks’
Celebrities continued to entertain us throughout the year with their antics
Nonika Singh

Honeymoon over: After many denials, the split between Hrithik Roshan and Suzanne Khan became wide open

Either way, how we love to see the rise and fall of the rich and famous, the stars and the celebs, and as is their wont, they never fail to disappoint. This year was no exception. The one star who literally fell while rising was Jennifer Lawrence. Out to receive the Oscar for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook, she tripped and created a stir. Later, she not only recovered from her fall but also dismissed her Oscar trophy with words, "I don’t know where I have put it away." Amnesia gripped the celebrated journalist and writer of The Alchemy of Desire Tarun Tejpal, whose fall from grace was the stuff that byte-hungry media is forever looking for. As he kept constructing and reconstructing his rendezvous with his employee, he obliterated the line between people who make news and newsmakers with remarkable flourish of his pen and gift of gab.

If he hogged the limelight for the wrong reasons, so did yet another thinking man, ahem thinking man’s actor. Pressed with the charges of domestic violence, gifted actor Om Puri, however, didn’t stay in public memory for too long and was out of it as soon as he got bail. Last heard, a family court had directed him to pay a monthly interim maintenance of Rs 1.25 lakh to his estranged wife Nandita and Rs 50,000 towards their son.

Marriages are made in heaven but need not necessarily be heaven on earth was evident in some Hollywood breakups too. Orlando Bloom and Miranda Kerr, who were seen at the 2013 Vanity Fair Oscars Party, announced their separation after three years of marriage in November. Of course, many kissed and made up. Most notable being Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who separated only to reunite. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, too, laid break-up rumours to rest as they cootchie cooed on the red carpet at the 66th Cannes Film Festival.

Rumours of breakup surfaced in our own tinseltown too. Hrithik Roshan, believed to be blissfully happy in his marriage, ruffled feathers as news of his estrangement with Suzanne did the rounds. After denying the rumours, the split was wide open. Hrithik declared, "I do not wish this news to disempower my fans and the people about the institution of marriage in anyway. I am a firm believer in this institution and respect and honour it at the highest level."

Lovebirds Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif, however, kept the world guessing. Even though the shutterbugs caught the loving duo holidaying, marriage reports only remained in the air.

If snooping paparazzi had a field day freezing Katrina in a bikini... MMS scandals, too, broke loose. While many a celebs, including Paris Hilton, were singed by the new technological marvel, Preity Zinta and Soha Ali Khan, too, smarted under its attack captured in varying degrees of undress. Predictably our beauties dismissed these as fake. And guess what, who was most outraged... singer Rihanna, whose raunchy acts leave little room for imagination. As her naked pictures hit the internet, the singer, otherwise comfortable with her skin and skin show, was devastated. The controversy’s favourite child flirted with many controversies...be it her performance at Los Angeles or her photoshoot in Abu Dhabi. Closer home, the enfant terrible of Indian rap, Yo Yo Honey Singh kept his date with courts as well as success.

His songs: be it "Auntie police bula legi" or "Sunny sunny" continued to lord over the popularity charts. If popular actors like Shah Rukh Khan proved a point with blockbuster Chennai Express, debutant actors like Sushant Singh Rajput and Aditya Roy Kapur laughed all the way to the bank, too, as their asking rate per film moved up in direct proportion to the revenue generated by their films. Fame survives death. Why else would a man try to sell stolen pieces of burnt bark of a tree that Fast and Furious star Paul Walker crashed into? However, popularity can be a tricky business as Nina Davuluri learnt the hard way. Crowned 2014 Miss America, the Indian-origin beauty’s moment of glory was marred by the racist tribe, who quickly moved to twitter to vent its venom. As many bigoted Americans called her Miss Al-Qaida and Miss Arab, they gave ignorance a new meaning.

And a new word entered Oxford dictionary. Part of Miley Cyrus’s dancing lexicon ‘twerk’ found its way into the annals of the dictionary defined as "to dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low squatting stance." Will Cyrus who repeated her jig at during KIIS FM’s Jingle Ball 2013 concert twerk again or not in 2014... our rich and famous club will certainly keep teasing our mind and senses in the next year too. So stay clued.

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