Column

Akshay Kumar’s latest film 8x10 Tasveer, is about a guy who can briefly go into the past by simply staring at a photograph. I’ve been trying to do the same with an 8x10 photograph of Shiney Ahuja, ever since I heard the bizarre story of him being signed by a Hollywood production to play an American. This is the height of outsourcing!

Not surprisingly, Barack Obama is hopping mad. “Are we Americans so lazy,” asked the US president at the G-20 summit, “that we don’t want to play ourselves in our movies and have found a cheaper option in India?” He complained to prime minister Manmohan Singh that Indians were not only grabbing American jobs but now also their identity. Michelle Obama feared the day Hollywood would make a film on her husband and get Sonu Sood to play Barack.

On the bright side, the acting fraternity in Bollywood is heaving a sigh of relief and welcomes this form of outsourcing in these days of recession and rift between producers and multiplexes. They believe that if Shiney can play an American and Frieda Pinto can be voted the fourth sexiest woman in the world, the day is not too far when Himesh Reshammiya will replace Christian Bale as the next Batman.

However, our film-makers are viewing this phenomenon with a pinch of cynicism. “Hollywood doesn’t know what it’s getting into,” said one disgruntled director on conditions of anonymity. “Most Bollywood actors have great capacity to bore their directors with gyan on every aspect of film-making. If American actors realise that their Indian counterparts can get away with all this and still have a flourishing career, there will be chaos in Hollywood.”

These are exciting times in showbiz. Sylvester Stallone is the star attraction in a Bollywood film. While the rest of the cast of Slumdog Millionaire is jobless, Frieda has signed a Woody Allen film! In fact, there are talks of a sequel to Danny Boyle’s international blockbuster which will now focus on Latika who dumps Jamal for American Shiney Ahuja, migrates to Las Vegas and writes a bestselling book titled Who Wants To Be With A Slumdog Millionaire! Not Me!