I really enjoyed this fashion shoot! I hope the pictures show it. It was for the latest issue of 'Harper's Bazaar'. And I must confess, I am Lovin' it!!!

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This appears in Sunday Times today...

Beep! Beep!What the F *#@ is going on….?

I love cussing. Always have. It is cathartic and liberating…. I have always believed cussing is good for health. If ‘Cuss and be damned’ is your mantra, you are actually doing your over worked heart a big favour . If more people cussed away uninhibitedly, chances are, the world would be a kinder, gentler place. But, here’s the catch - there’s a good way to cuss, and a nasty one. Good cussing is when there is no malice behind the swear word, and it is used to express love and admiration ( “Bitch! How dare you look this hot!”), frustration and irritation ( “Damn! Why the eff are you so effing late? I’ve missed half the effing movie!”). But bloody minded cussing is for the seriously badass types who harbour mean, evil thoughts towards the world and are mean, evil people themselves. The stupendous popularity of a slight, clever film (“Delhi Belly’) has opened up a stimulating dialogue on the power of gaalis. Especially English ones. To be addressed as ‘Dog’ shows a level of familiarity that makes the person thus addressed feel accepted…. even adored! These days, ‘Slut’ is right up there, if you wish to belong to in an international league of women who are adopting it as a big time bonding tool. ‘Whore’ remains in a grey area… but who knows, it could well become a favourite appellation of the ultra cool ( both sexes). Language is like that only! Fluid and unpredictable. That’s what makes language so seductive! Yesterday’s abuses becomes today’s terms of endearment. And all those embarrassed men whose real names happen to be ‘D.K.Bose’ need not run for cover - why ‘bhaag’ when you can dance to it, kyon Aamir?
Kader Khan (remember him?) made ‘ Kutey ke Aulaad’ pretty acceptable. If that was okay by the censor board of the day, what’s wrong with ‘son of a bitch’? As kids would put it, “Same to same, no, uncle?” The ‘B-word’
(b*****d) has always been trickier and more lethal since it is considered the ultimate abuse across cultures. To call someone a b****** is to question parentage and insult the mother. But to describe someone as a ‘Chu****’ ? Welllll – that depends. It’s English equivalent (“c**t” ) is not considered as terrible. Since this season’s most discussed movie centers around the impressive use of graphic expletives, apart from the even more graphic explorations of the two unmentionables of polite society ( shitting and fucking ), it merits a national debate on what is worse – the pornography of images or the pornography of words? Or, still more importantly, whether pornography itself needs a fresh definition. Now that the floodgates have been thrown open, it’s time to be more upfront about the ‘boldness’ out there, and deal with this tricky territory - the way modern India thinks and speaks… and yes…. err… f***s. Wake up! Our movies have made the big leap and high jumped into the 21st century when no one was looking. From two flowers kissing or two bushes shaking violently to suggest on- screen love making… here we are watching full on, in your face sex scenes, including one of the female protagonist of ‘DB’ faking an orgasm while shouting, “From the back… from the back…. yes, yes, yessss!” Nobody fainted inside the multiplex where I watched the movie . If anything, people were rolling in the aisles with glee and cheering the girl on!
We have come a long, long way from the old ‘wet saree’ sequence or the ‘girl under a waterfall’ ( how I miss the erotic charge of those sensuous sequences!). Today’s ‘item songs’ are as brazen and as blatantly sexual as anything one can find while surfing the net. But wait a minute – was ‘Choli Ke Peechhay Kya Hai?” less of a tease? Less provocative? Was Madhuri’s ‘dhak dhak’ not a turn on for an entire generation? Even in the cleavage stakes, we had our busty beauties willing to flash miles of it without blushing. What then is new? Avid Bollywood fans would say it’s those tongue- rolling kisses ( Aishwarya and Hritik Roshan set the trend) as opposed to couples rolling over snow and across verdant hills ( nobody did it better than ‘Yahoo’ Shammi Kapoor)? Similarly, bump- and- grind routines (‘Munni’ and Malaika) are as old as the hills… or as old as Helen (“Piya tu…ab to aaja” ). So… what it really boils down to is language. The shock value generated by ‘DB’ has little to do with the sex scene… it’s the effing language! How smart of Aamir Khan to zoom in on the last remaining frontier of ‘taboo’ in Bollywood (unparliamentary language). How smart of him to pepper the movie with ‘dirty dirty’ four letter words. And how smart of him to spoof recent item songs by performing one himself ( fully clad, but with the most suggestive pelvic thrusts ever). Aamir has taken Bollywood masala to the next level… by boldly testing the country’s ‘abuse meter’ He has shrewdly left it to the audience to decide how far to go with expletives. In the process he has made Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Beep Beep’ in ‘BHTB’ appear old school and out of sync with today’s movie goer.From ‘Kuttey -kamineey… door ho jayo mere nazron se…” to “ F*** off, you ‘Chu….”, Aamir has sensed the shift in our sensibilities - it’s desi abuses that score over phoren ones, folks. And Aamir has cashed in brilliantly on the altered vocabulary of the youth brigade. If ‘DB’ is being seen as a game changer, it is the rawness of the lingo alone that has done the trick at the box office. People come out of theatres exclaiming “What the f***! I totally loved this shit!” And they are paying a huge compliment! The big grins on their faces as they throw the f-word around randomly, demonstrates something more than just the thrill of cussing and swearing in public. It represents absolute delight at this new found freedom to use ‘forbidden words’ openly and not shock anybody. Not even themselves!
Personally speaking… that’s a bit of a shame. The F-word has just gone phooooos!And Aamir’s to blame for killing it.