Udta Punjab is an upcoming Indian crime thriller Bollywood film, directed by Abhishek Chaubey. It highlights the intensity of drug abuse in Punjab. The film features Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, and Diljit Dosanjh in the lead roles.
Sikh Youth Makindu will be featuring the film on the 25th of June 2016 at Sarit Centre from 4pm to 6pm , in order to raise funds for the SIKH HOSPITAL MAKINDU TRAUMA CENTRE being built on Mombasa Road for the safety of the drivers and their families.
Tickets will be sold at kSH 1200/- (inclusive of cocktails) and can be purchased from any Sikh Youth Makindu official member. Come join us for a safer future!
This is in aid of surgical charity. Please do your bit by getting your tickets AND enjoying a fantastic production. Tickets are being sold at all Toy World branches (Sarit, Yaya, Village Market).
The effervescent and greatly talented Salim Merchant shared his thoughts as Indian Idol Junior season 2 came to a close early this month.
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This season of Indian idol junior will be in the hearts of many many people all over the world. I’m very fortunate to have hand picked such incredible talent from india who are just from the age group of 7-15ys.
The juniors won our hearts with their divine voices. Their perfection in singing and their dedication in music has inspired me to be a better musician / composer. They have proved to the world that the this new generation in india is going to go a long way and make our country proud.
It was indeed a pleasure sharing the panel with Vishal. He’s a great friend and truly a free spirited musician. We had a great time witnessing such amazing talent and singing our hearts out to each others’ songs. Fantastic vibe!
Sonakshi was a blast! We had a great time bonding and sharing some fun moments on the sets. She’s real! No nonsense girl with a great sense of humour. Her admiration and love for the juniors made it so special for all of us.
Hussain and Asha were a riot and the entire crew brought in such a great vibe to make this show a grand success.
Singer, writer, musician, composer extraordinaire, Vishal Dadlani has called for support for new and fresh talent.
Today, Vishal expressed his support for Dhruv Visvanath and his upcoming album ‘Orion’.
Proud to present Dhruv Visvanath and his truly brilliant album “Orion”. Coming soon! Please do support this. There is so much INSANE talent out there! I want to release music from four or five new artists a year, at least. Will build up to it over the next year or so. Slowly, slowly changee scenee! 😉
Mid December last year (gosh, that sounds like a long time ago) I took my kids to the cinemas to watch a much-awaited Bollywood movie P.K. that starred superstar Aamir Khan. A few months before the released first-look posters caused quite a stir with Amir Khan posing stark naked with just a transistor radio to give him decency. I’m yet to understand why that caused a furore because he would have been less covered had he been wearing just a swimsuit.
Anyway, we went to watch the movie and thoroughly enjoyed it. There was a great life lesson in the movie, and I know this isn’t going to serve as a spoiler, but the movie talked about something very important regarding religion. I guess those who wanted to understand the message in the movie did so without any problem and got on with life. The rest called for the movie to be banned or said it hurt their religious sentiments.
In his search for ‘God’, P.K. (that was the name of Aamir’s character) gets dejected and no one seems to have the answers he is looking for. He does everything that is required of him but he still doesn’t get the answers when he realizes that all answers are within. The message being given out, basically, is that look within you for answers, be a good person, realise that the strength lies in you and not others.
I’m so glad that my children watched this movie because on the way home, as we discussed it, I was glad to note that they had picked on the lesson themselves. They had rationalized everything and knew that it takes faith in yourself to create your positivity and not some ‘Manager of God’ who will tell you how to get rid of your problems in exchange for money and other silly rituals one might have to perform to get relief from the problem.
So I’m thinking, if my kids can rationalize like that, why can’t grown ups, calling to ban the movie, think that way too? Calling to ban the movie because it has hurt religious sentiment is a bit silly. Is that how strong your faith in your religion is that you feel threatened by a mere movie that tells you to look within for all answers? If the movie is so upsetting, why go watch it in the first place, and if you are sitting in the cinema watching it, and it’s upsetting you, why are you sitting in there watching it to the end?
I heard of people vandalizing and destroying cinemas in India as a mark of protest. IDIOTS! Is that what your religion teaches you? I thought religion was about love, respect, tolerance and forgiving? I was so happy to note that the Supreme Court in India refused to ban the film. If entertainment is hurting religious sentiment, then you go sit in your place of worship instead of watching the movie made purely for entertainment because you can’t seem to put the two in their compartments.
No one’s religion is better than the other. No one’s ‘God’ is mightier than the other. There was nothing disrespectful at all about the movie, in my opinion, and I strongly suggest you watch it if you haven’t. If you do not know how to control your religious emotions and get worked up at everything, then don’t watch it. Stay where you are and turn to the chapter in your Book that teaches tolerance and throw away your need to be destructive.
I have enough faith in my Maker not to have to ask someone to perform miracles for me when life isn’t going right for me in exchange of ‘donations’ or offerings. I have enough faith in the Word to realize with humility that I am getting back what I give out to the Universe. I know that my mission in life is to be good and do good unto others. When I’m suffering, I am not to go to a ‘Manager of God’ and seek help in getting life back in order but do my best to overcome adversities and apply logic to sort problems out. With the faith and belief that I can do it.
I also believe there is a God and that She has a great sense of humour too.
This column may have people wanting to destroy me, but then again, that depends on what their God teaches them. Have a great week.
It’s been long! Welcome back ‘Deep-ends’. Your movie reviews were missed!
~ Kamal
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Despite being a Punjabi, a film with a name like “Humpty” in it, is not very encouraging! But sources I respect had given it the thumbs up, so a bunch of us huddled up with popcorn in a half empty theatre on Monday night. It started with the familiar audio of Kuch Kuch hota hai which was immediately encouraging, as a typical Dharma (Karan Johar) production conjures up images of guaranteed ingredients including, a full-scale Punjabi shaadi, splatter of gay humor, some NRIs, good music with the inevitable Rahat Fateh Ali Khan vocals and a sizable piece of family drama!
Trust me, this film does not disappoint in any of those aspects. In fact, there are some refreshing deviations from the norm, like the NRI is actually a very likable guy and does not speak broken Hindi with a twang! Even the “location” is refreshing…for a change, the entire movie is shot in India! 😉 There is a conscious ode to DDLJ which Karan Johar openly admits is the most iconic movie of the 90’s. Honestly, after Student of the year, Siddharath Malhotra is really my favorite actor from the new crop but Varun Dhawan is likable in this role of a clichéd, naughty but kind hearted boy, who meets and falls in love with the bratty girl from Ambala.
Alia is adorable and a very natural actress. She does well as the beer guzzling Kavya, who just wants an atrociously expensive “designer” lengha from Dehli for her wedding and goes drinking with 3 boys that she has just met, and spends a night in their apartment…not advisable especially in Dehli, where the most horrendous stories are coming out of! But of course, in the land of Bollywood, reality must take a break! Manish Malhotra, comes in full play with his collection of bridal lenghas from which to choose from. Before I make a trip to India, can someone please give me the address of the place in Dehli where you can get MM knock-offs for a third of the price?! All-in-all, a very enjoyable movie! Everything that we have come to love about Karan Johar, packaged into the 2 ½ hour escape from reality! I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
Mika Singh! Our favourite Badmaash of Bollywood!
Welcome to East Africa yet again… and most importantly to Nairobi.
Thank you ji, thank you so much. And first of all Satsriakal, Namaste and Salaam Aleikum Nairobi, I’m here just for five hours and I just had a great concert in Uganda, all thanks to the Uganda fans and Ranee Jamal of Ranee Productions, and maybe I’ll come in December to perform again in Nairobi.
I know you are in transit and we’re honoured you took the time to speak to us. You were performing in Uganda in Kampala this weekend. How was the experience?
It was great. There were more than 15,000 people at the concert. I thought there would be at least 5 to 6 thousand people but this was something else. It was a really great experience and I sang straight for three hours with my latest song Agal Bagal as well, which is from my latest film Phata Poster Nikla Hero that stars Shahid Kapoor.
*sings a line from the song*
I must ask you, was the Nairobi audience better or Kampala?
**laughs** Well, both places are in Africa. So it’s like asking me how it was performing in Gujrat or Punjab. I got a lot of love from both Nairobi and Uganda but I must say the audience in Nairobi knows how to party and dance and are full of life. Also definitely Nairobi has a lot of Punjabi people, and being a Punjabi you know how we like to dance and enjoy life.
You’ve been extensively touring a lot. How do you find time to do playback singing AND tour at the same time?
Yes it does get really very difficult but it is also something that I love doing, I’m a work freak and I love to work. I try my best to juggle both aspects – singing live on stage and also playback. Of late there are a lot of my tracks that will be released. Right now there’s Zulmi Zulmi from Grand Masti, and I’m also singing for the first time for Ranbir Kapoor in the film Besharam, I have two tracks in that film. Also it’s the first time my brother Daler Mehndi and I will be singing together – I’m lending my voice to Ranbir Kapoor and Daler will be lending his voice to Ranbir’s father, Rishi Kapoor.
Your latest superhit is Agal Bagal. It’s one of the most requested songs on our station at East FM right now. What is your secret to giving out one superhit after another?
This is all because of my fans, it’s their blessings and they keep supporting me for so many years so definitely, the credit goes to my fans.
So what else can we expect from you? What other projects are you working on?
I have a song ‘Saawan Meh Lag Gayi Aag’, you might remember it as the first song that gave me a platform almost fifteen years ago, I’m working on a remix of this track because I always get a very good response whenever I sing this song on stage. Besides that I’m getting a pop album ready for my fans, and besides that I will make some good videos in which my fans can see me.
I also have a movie coming out soon. I’m starring with the singer Shaan and that movie will be releasing soon. We are both singing in the film and acting in it too.
Deep-ends is here again! Here’s a review of Madras Cafe
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Madras Cafe is an intense, thought-provoking, docu-drama high-lighting events preceding the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi 22 years ago. This is an important and informative film that educated me about the long and bitter guerilla war in Sri Lanka and India’s involvement in it. This is one of those film’s that you leave and rush home to look up everything you can on about that period in history on the internet.
It makes you think about what a threat India is to the west as an emerging superpower in the global market and why they are so threatened that they would even support terrorists in order to get a stronghold on India’s borders, be it in Sri Lanka or Pakistan.
The question also arises, that in the end, who gained from Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination? Certainly not the Tamil guerilla leaders who orchestrated the assassination because their leader is now dead and his army disbanded, not the western forces because they still haven’t managed to secure a foothold on this volatile island and so it was most likely, shockingly, the BJP party that was in power in Dehli at the time because they were threatened by the possibility that Rajiv Gandhi would win the next election! The Indian government was aware of the plot to kill the ex-prime minister but did little to nothing to stop it.
My friends and I were bawling our eyes out watching these real-life events re-enacted on the screen. My heart goes out to Sonia Gandhi, it will be a heart-wrenching film for her to watch. In conclusion,this is a serious film that must be seen because it makes all the other crap we watch seem so frivalous. Enjoy! I give it 5 stars!
Deep-ends is back!
~Kamal
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Bhaag Milka Bhaag is brilliant! This is a true story about Milkha Singh, a gifted athlete who held the 400-meter world record and represented India at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. In fact, he lost that particular race at the Olympics because of his own personal demons. As a child he witnessed his parents’ slaughter during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the genocide that followed. He rebuilt his life as a street urchin in Dehli, joined the army and started running just to get the glass of milk and 2 raw eggs that the top 10 fastest runners were given.
Milka Singh is played by a sinewy Farhan Akhtar who trained for a year and a half for this role and has given a brilliant and honest portrayal of the sardhar. You leave the theatre just bursting with patriotism and total respect for the dedication, determination and hard work that this athlete put in his pursuit of excellence. Other notable performances are a sensitive portrayal of Milkha’s adoring, older sister from Divya Dutta as the only survivor of the genocide that wiped out his family during the partition and Pavan Malhotra as Milkha’s mentor and the first trainer to spot his potential as a runner. Sonam Kapoor’s role is very small but important.
On the down side, it was just a little tooooo long. As usual, they could have cut out a lot of the song and dance as it was not necessary to the story.
Here is an interesting fact, Milka Singh has co-written an autobiography, entitled The Race of My Life with his daughter, Sonia Sanwalka. The book inspired the movie and he sold the rights to produce the movie for one rupee but inserted a clause stating that a share of the profits would be given to the Milkha Singh Charitable Trust. The Trust was founded in 2003 with the aim of assisting poor sports people. Respect for Milka Singh went up several notches after hearing this! It’s only once in a long while that a film comes along that makes you so proud of your Indian heritage. I feel especially proud as he is a Sikh. This one is worthy of the OSCARS…aah ho!
– Deep-ends
Bhangra music is to see an unexpected and surprising collaboration in 2013 with the return of an artist who has given Punjabi music fans some of the biggest anthems of all time, Mr ‘De De Ghera’ himself …. Balvir Boparai teams up with Dipps Bhamrah!
Hailing from Boparai Kalan in Ludihana, Balvir Boparai sent Punjabi music lovers world wide into a frenzy when his ground breaking album ‘Hostel’ was released. The 2005 album featured songs written and vocaled by Balvir Boparai and included, undoubtedly, one of Bhangra music’s most iconic tracks in ‘De De Ghera’. To this day the track is still part of DJ playlists around the world and has etched Balvir Boparai’s name into history.
Tracks like ‘Hostel’, ‘Ve Shudaiya’ & ‘Hookan’ have established Balvir as a vocalist. His lyrics have also made hits for fellow artists including Inderjit Nikku, Late Kulwinder Dhillon, Ranjit Mani, and Daljit Dosanjh which includes the super hit track ‘Nachdiya Alrhan Kuarian’.
In 2013, H.S.Preet (Sangeet Darpan Magazine, Punjab) presents Balvir Boparai’s forthcoming album with one of UK’s most charismatic all round Bhangra entertainers, Dipps Bhamrah. As an international DJ, music producer and BBC Asian Network radio presenter, Dipps Bhamrah has been flying the Bhangra flag for many years and follows up from his 2012 album ‘Project:BHANGRA’ success with his music gracing the brand new Balvir Boparai album.
With the brand new 8 track album nearing completion, the Balvir Boparai & Dipps Bhamrah collaboration will be releasing in late 2013.
