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Aishwarya, Sachin invest in windmills

Bollywood heartthrob Aishwarya Rai and cricketing great Sachin Tendulkar are raking in the moolah from the wind now. Literally.

Both have invested funds into projects of alternative sources of energy in the Satara district of Maharashtra and in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan: namely, windmill projects.

According to P L Aggarwal, collector and district magistrate of Jaisalmer, the two celebrities have invested more Rs 8-9 crore (Rs 80-90 million) each and have helped Suzlon Energy in installing two windmills each.

"Aishwaraya Rai invested the money in Jaisalmer two years ago, while Sachin Tendulkar followed a year later," Aggarwal told rediff.com in a conversation at the Border Security Force office late last week.

According to senior officials of the district electricity board, during the last two years, the screen goddess has collected a cool Rs 1.6 crore (Rs 16 million) as return on her investment, while the batting maestro has received Rs 80 lakh (Rs 8 million) in the first year of his investment.

"They may soon be investing more money in the windmill project in Rajasthan," the electricity board official said.

Over 400 windmills have been set up in Jaisalmer alone, collectively producing 150 megawatts of power. "We have a population of 50,000. Since we do not have big industries, our needs are met by 35 megawatts of electricity. The rest of the power is put on the grid that supplies power to other parts of the state. I can proudly say that our district has 24-hour uninterrupted supply of electricity," Aggarwal said with pride.

He, however, refused to confirm the kind of returns that Aishwarya Rai and Sachin Tendulkar and other investors are getting on their investment. Sources said that many gutkha producers too have invested in the windmill project. Consumers in Jaisalmer pay Rs 3.25 per unit of power, and this is one of the lowest power tariffs in the country.

Aishwarya Rai


Sachin Tendulkar

Bhumicka Singh's Aishwarya connection

Bhumicka Singh is all set to make her Bollywood debut with Dharmesh Darshan's 'Aap Ki Khatir'. She happens to be the daughter of Hari Singh, Aishwarya Rai's secretary. She has always looked up to Rai as her idol. More so, because of her close association with the actress.

Bhumicka was discovered while she was strolling across Mumbai's Carter Road area. Dharmesh Darshan spotted her and before she knew it she had bagged the role. When the actress in the making told Ash about this development, Ash congratulated her. She was very supportive and even gave her a talk about the importance of hard work.

As a child, Bhumicka was inspired by Madhuri Dixit. She is a trained Kathak dancer and has also done a formal course in acting from Kishore Namit Kapoor.  

Shah Rukh, Rani Mukherjee most popular actors for kids: Survey

When it comes to Indian kids, Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee are the most popular actors, closely followed by Aishwarya Rai, according to findings of a survey conducted by a TV channel across 14 cities in India.

In the "New Generations 2005" survey conducted by Cartoon Network among 8927 kids between 7-19 years, 20 per cent of the total kids voted for Shah Rukh Khan. Rani Mukerji emerged as the favourite actress with 16 per cent votes. The ranking is almost same among boys and girls.

Among sportspersons, Sachin Tendulkar continues to be the Indian children's favourite with 41 per cent of kids (7-14 years) voting for him followed by Rahul Dravid at 13 per cent, Sourav Ganguly and Sania Mirza stood next at six per cent each, said Vice President, Research and Market Development, Turner International Asia Pacific Ltd, Duncan Morris.

The survey, which provides an insight into Indian kids' lifestyles, habits, preferences also found that Indian kids are becoming increasingly tech savyy - about 40 per cent of kids are computer users; mobile phones, VCD-DVD players can be found in at least 50 per cent of homes and 74 per cent aspire to own mobile phones with camera.

Introduced in 1998, the fourth India specific survey also found that television is the dominant leisure activity for kids, nine in ten believe that they have an "active, healthy lifestyle; 40 per cent of the kids are movie goers and about 8 to 10 go out more with their families.

Questioned about their top three favourite television genres, 79 per cent kids voted for cartoons, 34 per cent for sports and 31 per cent for movies.

Shah Rukh Khan


Rani Mukherjee

Preity to dance solo in overseas shows after Saif`s illness


Popular Indian actress Preity Zinta says she will have to drastically change her act for shows in the United States and Britain after her dance partner, Saif Ali Khan, fell ill, accord to a newspaper report Monday.

Zinta and Khan had practiced song and dance routines for the tour, which begins next week, but doctors advised Khan to rest after he underwent an emergency appendicitis operation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Zinta told the Mumbai Mirror newspaper that she wouldn't cancel the shows, but would rework her act.

''I am feeling terrible for Saif,'' Zinta said in the interview published Monday. ''The doctors have advised him to take complete rest.'' Khan and Zinta were scheduled to perform dance routines from their blockbuster movie ''Salaam Namaste'' or 'Hello, Hello'.

Zinta said she likes to make sure everything is perfect before taking the stage for a live show and would need to work intensively with her choreographer to alter the routine. ''I think this time we'll have to completely change and rework the steps due to Saif's absence,'' she said.

Top Bollywood actors often take part in song and dance road shows during the summer that are popular among South Asians living in Canada, Britain and the United States. Khan was shooting a television commercial in Kuala Lumpur when he complained of acute abdominal pain last week.

Preity Zinta


Saif Ali Khan

Bollywood star Preity Zinta wants to remake her reel image

Just as she has made it through life and death scenes on the big screen, Bollywood star Preity Zinta has survived terrifying experiences in real life, testifying against a mafia don and surviving the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Throughout it all, the 31-year-old actress has managed to keep the dimpled, chatty girl-next-door image that she rode to fame.

But it has been eight years since Zinta's debut in "Dil Se," or "From the Heart," and now she wants to erase the image that has made her famous before her characters become caricatures.

"I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being bubbly. I'm sick of being talkative and I'm sick of being cute," said Zinta, her trademark smile missing, but her dimples making a fleeting appearance.

"That image has stuck with me," she said in an interview. "I mean, you evolve, you know?"

Zinta is hoping her role in "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna," or "Never Say Goodbye," slated for release later this year, will help her find a new public image.

The movie has drawn a lot of attention in Bollywood, largely for its star-studded cast, which, along with Zinta, includes some of the industry's biggest draws, such as Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee.

The actors have been tightlipped about the plot, saying only that it's about relationships and marriages not being as perfect as they appear. Zinta said she plays a "very ambitious magazine editor."

Going against mores

Zinta has a reputation for choosing roles that go against India's traditional mores, even if she has smiled her way through them.

She played an unwed mother in "Kya Kehna," or "What Can You Say," in 2000. In last year's blockbuster "Salaam Namaste," or "Hello Hello," she played a woman who defied her family and moved in with her boyfriend before getting married.

"I always look for something interesting," she said during the interview at her office in a Bombay suburb last month.

Apart from her reel life, she has also made headlines -- but not the sort most actresses make.

Zinta was a star witness at the 2003 trial of a movie financier, Bharat Shah, who police suspected had links to Bombay's mafia. She testified about threats she had received from a gangster thought to be tied to Shah.

Several other movie stars who were also allegedly threatened retracted statements they had given to police, fearing retaliation from gangsters. Zinta's testimony was supposed to remain confidential, but word of it leaked and the news was splashed on front pages across India.

Shah was eventually found guilty of withholding information about the mafia but not of being directly linked to the mob.

Zinta, meanwhile, was given police protection and forced to stay out of the public eye for about two months. "My life was a living hell," she said. "I think I aged 10 years then."

Accidental movie star

She never planned to be actress and stumbled into Bollywood when a well-known filmmaker spotted her in a soap advertisement while she was studying for a postgraduate degree in criminal psychology, Zinta said.

She insists the ad was just for fun. "I never thought I'd be an actor -- ever," she recalls. "I had never gone to film school or done a dance class."

Instead, she has learned by trial and error while appearing in more than 20 movies. Along the way, Zinta has become one of India's top actresses, but she says it was her role in the mob trial and the loss of friends to the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 that has given her a sense of perspective.

Zinta was fast asleep in a beach-side villa in Thailand when the killer waves struck and says she still remembers being wakened by the thundering noise of water smashing everything around her.

She ran and survived. Friends who had traveled with her, however, did not make it out -- something she does not like to talk about.

"The people I went with were some friends I had grown up with. I'd known them all my life," she said before changing the subject without saying how many died.

"It really made me think about why everybody around me went and I didn't," Zinta says, covering her eyes. More than half of about 5,400 people killed in Thailand were foreign tourists.

Since then, Zinta says she has taken life slower -- for example, she only made one film last year instead of working at the breakneck pace most Bollywood stars put up with.

"I'm more grounded now. I've started doing fewer films. I've started meditating," Zinta says. "I want to live my today because I may not have a tomorrow."

Jimmy, Morea playing dirty with Celina?
  
Much happened on the sets of Deepak Tijori抯 Tom, Dick & Harry. We hear that actress Celina Jaitley and actor Anuj Sawhney could抳e been a little tipsy while shooting for this flick. However, the people behind all the 憇pirit

Why Bipasha Basu is angry

The sultry Bipasha Basu is angry about a promotional material of the forthcoming film Humko Deewana Kar Gaye .

Humko Deewana Kar Gaye has Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif in the lead roles and Bipasha is being projected as a second leading lady

Benaras explores India`s caste system: Urmila
  
Popular actress Urmila Matondkar says her new film will revisit India's ancient caste system and examine how it has evolved in modern times.
Matondkar was in Lucknow, capital of India's northern Uttar Pradesh state to promote the film, ''Benaras - A Mystic Love Story'' before its nationwide release on April 6. She said she chose to act in the film ''because the story was compelling.''

The film tells the tale of a young girl upper caste girl, played by Matondkar, who falls in love with a low caste music scholar at a university in Benaras, which is also known as Varanasi. The affair evokes strong protests from Benaras' ruling elite. Under India's 3,000-year old caste system, people are divided by birth. The castes traditionally fall along occupation lines, with priests and warriors occupying the top tiers. What are considered the lowest jobs - such as sweeping streets or cleaning toilets - are for those considered outside the system, known as untouchables, who make up about 80 percent of India's one billion people.

Discrimination along caste lines was officially outlawed in 1950, but such prejudice has persisted against the lowest in the system, even as the country has developed economically and people of all backgrounds have entered the professions and business world. Matondkar, 32, started out in Bollywood as a 6-year-old child actor and has starred in more than 50 movies.

She branched out into arthouse movies to shed her glamor girl tag after a 1995 hit ''Rangeela,'' or ''Full of Color,'' where she played a middle-class girl who gets a big break in the movies. The film also stars Bollywood's leading character actors, Dimple Kapadia and Naseeruddin Shah, who play Matondkar's parents.

''The movie brings out the positive aspects of the holy city of Benaras,'' Matondkar said. The film has been extensively shot in Varanasi, which many Indians use interchangeably with Benaras.

wah... venuz very rajin eh post2 pasal boliwud... dah sampe page 113 ni me tngok cuma 3 page jer org lain nyer postings... yg baki 110 sumer venuz punya... tak main tenis nari??

Browneyes

Originally posted by guvnor at 6-4-2006 01:06 PM
wah... venuz very rajin eh post2 pasal boliwud... dah sampe page 113 ni me tngok cuma 3 page jer org lain nyer postings... yg baki 110 sumer venuz punya... tak main tenis nari??

hehehehehe....

iansuryani

Originally posted by guvnor at 6-4-2006 01:06 PM
wah... venuz very rajin eh post2 pasal boliwud... dah sampe page 113 ni me tngok cuma 3 page jer org lain nyer postings... yg baki 110 sumer venuz punya... tak main tenis nari??

venus kan minat giler dengan hindustan...biarlah dia, asalakn tak kacau orang lain...heheheh...dah venus minat dan rajin...kankankankankan

Originally posted by iansuryani at 6-4-2006 01:35 PM


venus kan minat giler dengan hindustan...biarlah dia, asalakn tak kacau orang lain...heheheh...dah venus minat dan rajin...kankankankankan

naseb baik dia tak giler... kalu dia kacau org lain nanti kene pukol pulak~~~

Originally posted by guvnor at 6-4-2006 01:06 PM
wah... venuz very rajin eh post2 pasal boliwud... dah sampe page 113 ni me tngok cuma 3 page jer org lain nyer postings... yg baki 110 sumer venuz punya... tak main tenis nari??

Tk perna seumur idup aku main tenis.

Originally posted by iansuryani at 6-4-2006 01:35 PM


venus kan minat giler dengan hindustan...biarlah dia, asalakn tak kacau orang lain...heheheh...dah venus minat dan rajin...kankankankankan

I memang minat gile...best dpt tgk gbr2 artis pompuan...tringin nk pose mcm diorg..hehehe

Originally posted by Gadis_Venus at 6-4-2006 03:36 PM

Tk perna seumur idup aku main tenis.

if u nak nanti ajak u main okies...

Originally posted by guvnor at 6-4-2006 01:38 PM


naseb baik dia tak giler... kalu dia kacau org lain nanti kene pukol pulak~~~

Org gila yg kacau I adala.

Originally posted by guvnor at 6-4-2006 03:37 PM


if u nak nanti ajak u main okies...

I lebih minat main badminton.

Originally posted by Gadis_Venus at 6-4-2006 03:38 PM
Org gila yg kacau I adala.

alah cianz nyerr.... org gila tu gilakan u lah..

Originally posted by Gadis_Venus at 6-4-2006 03:38 PM

I lebih minat main badminton.

betol??? ok weekend nak kiter main badminton???

Originally posted by guvnor at 6-4-2006 03:41 PM



betol??? ok weekend nak kiter main badminton???

Kat mane?