Bitchy Bee

What the HELL is wrong with our largely ignorant and idiotic government?? They set up committees or decision-making bodies to choose who gets what national recognition and laurels are bestowed upon people whose body of work or contribution to our society does not justify their winning prestigious honours.

To put things more clearly, I am talking about the recent Padma Shree Awards bestowed upon people who have made SIGNIFICANT contributions to our society, by the Indian government. Make no mistake, this is not an attempt to question anyone's body of work or achievements nor is it diminishing their contribution to life, this country etc. Rather, I'm questioning our leaders, the so-called people who are 'leading' our country into the future and who have an innate knack for making themselves look like fools!

Without pointing fingers at anyone, I'm asking: what is stopping them from recognising people like, say veteran Hindi film costume designer Bhanu Athaiya? For God's sake, the lady has won an Oscar award, the only, the ONLY, might I repeat, Indian to have won an Academy Award in a 'competitive category' in the history of Indian cinema. (Not to confuse it with Satyajit Ray, who was honoured with an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1992. He received the award from his sickbed in Calcutta, through a special live satellite-television event.)

Now get this: Since the inception of the Academy Awards until 1982, when Athaiya won the award for Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, no Indian had laid claim to bagging one. Since 1982 to this very moment, no Indian has STILL won an Oscar award! Her record is unbroken. Besides this achievement, she has worked in Indian cinema for about 50 years and is still going strong! She has done more than 100 films, worked with great and noted filmmakers like Guru Dutt, Yash Chopra, Raj Kapoor, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Conrad Rooks.

With screen legends like Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Waheeda Rahman, Dev Anand, Meena Kumari, Rekha, Mumtaz and even today's top actors like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan. At the turn of every decade of Indian entertainment since Independence, she has been at the heart of creating fashions that went on to become the rage of the year, season, decade or what have you! Example: Meena Kumari in Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, Waheeda Rahman in Guide, the still-famous Sadhna cut from Waqt – how can we ever forget? Or Mumtaz in the fashionably pleated orange sari from Brahmachari? Or Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram? Or Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili? Or Bhuvan and his band of cricketers in their village clothes winning a grueling game of cricket in Lagaan? These fashions continue to haunt us till today and almost every fashion designer or so-called costume designer today has attempted to copy or replicate designs/ fashions made popular by her.

Wake up and smell the coffee, you people who decide who wins our country's top honours. Looks to me like the people in these committees or jury's are highly ill informed, and don't look beyond the party pages of daily tabloids for their daily dose of information/ knowledge. They appear to be greatly star struck.

Just because someone like Athaiya prefers to keep a low profile and not publicise her every move in the newspapers, our learned administration does not think that people like her should be recognised. God forbid, they probably think she's not around with us anymore!

I won't be surprised if they bestow one of these top civilian awards for great contribution to our society to Manish Malhotra types next year! Or worse, me! Have you heard about…? "This Bombay-based socialite who recently got engaged amidst much fanfare to a man of her dreams. She chased him quite a bit and orchestrated a budding relationship. However, as the buzz goes in society circles, the man is not what he seems to be. Okay, well, he's supposed to have had a colourful reputation in the recent past (read bisexual). It always amazes me how the world and their mothers get to know about the real stories before the parties actually at the receiving end of the deception do.

Aamir Khan supposedly charging 1/3rd the profits of the production costs of Ghajini . Which means, if he is getting crores for the film as his acting fee, and the film's production cost totals to Rs 60 crores, he walks away with Rs 20 crores, plus the 5. That's a cool Rs 25 crores. (Note to self: – better makes friends with him, pronto!)

This fresh face in Bollywood who made a splashy splash last year in a period flick of sorts and how we'll see her in a double role (again!) in one of her next films!