"Inappropriate touching" - Bollywood Ishtyle

I wanted to share a few images of Heavenly Havana with my blogdosts. The first few are of the hotel we stayed in, which I absolutely loved, especially the 24x7 Verandah Bar with its wonderful Mojitos.
The little girl was celebrating her first birthday in the large public square, while close by a bride in sunny yellow was on her way to get married. Watching all this from his balcony was a Cuban guy ( the heat was obviously getting to him!), and in an Old Havana bar, a local dancer was showing off his sexy moves to an overwhelmed Canadian woman! I'm missing "Koo-bah!"
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This appeared in Bombay Times...



Frankly, most readers fell off their chairs while reading about a recent incident in Goa, where yesteryear’s actress,Ameesha Patel apparently had a flaming row with some guy and accused him of ‘inappropriate touching’. All this was reported in delicious detail in a weekly, and had the tittering classes tittering some more! After a stormy walk out from the mutual friend’s sangeet celebrations, the guy at the receiving end of the actresses’ wrath refused to apologise, insisting no such ‘inappropriateness’ had taken place. The same actress had also (allegedly) been told to ‘cover up’ by senior actor Sanjay Dutt recently, when she flashed far too much cleavage at another high profile function. I guess,her skimpy choli was considered ‘inappropriate’, too. This is plain ludicrous and shows the extent of the double standards that exist in Bollywood. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander, too. But when it comes to the females in our film industry, the males instantly gang up to supposedly ‘protect’ the lady’s honour. Meanwhile, the Big Boys themselves can pretty much lech, paw and ‘persuade’ even the most unwilling females to bed them ( it’s considered a ‘favour’, remember?). But show the same medieval-minded macho studs a woman with attitude, and they get Neanderthal. Ameesha Patel is a big girl and can look out for herself. She is closer to 40 than 30. If she chooses to flash her cleavage ( and she does that a lot!), it’s entirely her call. She doesn’t need a big brother to defend her modesty. About the ‘inappropriate touching’ … well, surely an experienced woman of the world like an Ameesha, knows the difference between a friendly pat and groping? For now, let’s leave the ‘inappropriateness’ of our item songs aside. It’s obviously one rule for performances on screen, and another for off-screen nautanki. It’s time our filmi ladies stood up for themselves and told the bullying hulks where to get off.