SCANDALS, SHAADIS & SALLU!
News Review Of 2000

2000 was the year for gossips scandals and marriages in filmdom. Veritably, Indian celluloid might not have witnessed so many weddings in a month as it did in December 2000.

The abstraction that one derived from looking at the Salman Khan and Aishwarya affair seemed as if the girl was just madly in love with a man who seemed to hold her under a spell. Luckily for Aishwarya, her father hadn't taught Salman to act or sing. Otherwise he would have asked Salman to let go off his lady love like he had to do in Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam as guru dakshina!! Salman wasn't best behaved this year. He actually decayed from naughty boy to bad boy and to very bad boy.

Salman did everything from knocking at Ash's door till his hand bled, he even threatened her father with dire sequences if he did not allow her to marry him. He also waxed his legs along with his chest for Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega, thus looking more of a gay symbol than an actor. He also asked Ash to drop out of a few good films. Her parents now believe that she is under his spell because he has cast some black magic on her.

Salman also has gone deeper in to trouble with the Black buck killing case in Jodhpur. The Income Tax officials too raided his house to uncover some startling facts. The CBI has found his name linked in match fixing.
The police too have found some evidence linking him to the underworld.

Talking of the underworld, the Chori Chori Chupke Chupke case has also rocked the film world. The arrest of Nazim Rizvi and his admission to his involvement with Chhota Shakeel has also meant that the entire film industry is in for a bad time. Bharat Shah, Salman Khan Rani Mukherjee and Preity Zinta were also interrogated by the underworld. People like Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Rakesh Roshan and Vidhu Vinod Chopra were threatened by the underworld.

Salman apart other actors like Urmila Matondkar, Aishwarya Rai Amrish Puri, Rani Mukerjee, Yash Chopra and Karan Johar were raided by the Income Tax. The IT guys not only recovered rupees four crore of unaccounted income from her house and four men's underwear! It's certainly a jungle out there in her house. Hey Ramu!

Rajesh Khanna was acquitted from the 9 IT cases pending against him for the past 18 years.

Akshay Kumar got engaged to Twinkle Khanna after ditching Shilpa Shetty. Shilpa went to town talking against Akshay and Raveena felt bad that he had got engaged to Akshay at one point of time. Pooja Batra never made any statement luckily. Akshay repeated what he has been doing. One wonders how long this engagement would last.

On the good front Amitabh made a fantastic return to the mainstream with a stupendous show with the programme Kaun Banega Crorepati. The success of the programme also meant that his film release Mohabbatein was a much better one and Amitabh is back as an actor.

The year also saw the debuts of Hrithik Roshan and Abhishek Bachchan.
While Hrithik did wonderfully well, Abhishek performed well, but did not get the desired response at the box office.

Kareena Kapoor also made her debut and so did Amisha Patel, but it seems like Kareena has taken the cake.

2000 also saw a lot of films failing at the box-office. The industry also lost over Rs 4000 million through various flops.

After all the weddings took place well, the year ended on a bad note when Hrithik Roshan's name was dragged into the controversy for saying things against Nepal when he was not at all involved with the entire episode.

All in all it was a good year for salt and pepper bearded Amitabh Bachchan who had his model waxed at Madam Tussaud's and a bad year for the hair woven Salman Khan who had his chest waxed.

WRITTEN BY R KULKARNI