And the award goes to...

Each year, the International Indian Film Academy holds its awards ceremony in a different city (duh), to bring Indian cinema to a global audience. IIFA 2011 was a huge deal because it was the first time that the awards were held in North America, with Toronto winning the bid. It does seem a bit odd that Vancouver, L.A., or even New York weren't on the list (given their glitz factor), but having them in Toronto automatically qualified me to be part of the "action", since I was a "correspondent" for a national Bollywood show. 

I'll skip opening my mouth and saying too much about what I felt and thought about the whole schabang, because that would be cruel. But what I will say is that, in theory, the idea of the IIFAs is actually not half bad. Like a travelling circus, people all over have a chance to see the "stars" and get a little bit of Bollywood injected into their city. The weekend has press conferences, movie premieres, a fashion/rock show, as well as the highlight of the weekend, the awards. Last year, Toronto also held a film festival, a Raj Kapoor retrospective, in honour of the late actor/director/producer/writer/film mogul. And of course, let's not forget the economic impact...it's huge! People LOVE the acting elite, no matter what their culture, language, or place of origin, and wherever they go, so to, do the masses. There were tens of thousands of people that came into the city from as far as Australia (I met a couple who flew in just for the show). Hotels, restaurants, transport, and retailers all see the effect...CHA-CHING!

Since the Bachchans bowed out of the celebration (Amitabh was replaced as brand ambassador by the one and only SRK), there was a lot of speculation about whether or not the IIFAs would lose their lustre. And to tell you the truth, they kinda did. Sure, King Khan (as he's called) drew in a HUGE crowd, but somehow, he didn't impress me that much in person...especially after his security guard had the audacity of stepping on the toe of my brand new Hugo Boss shoes that retail for $700...and after he showed up late for the press conference he called about his new production company. He certainly wasn't enough to "sell out" the show, because over half of the Rogers Centre sat empty. The weekend also lacked the star power that it should have brought. Many stars were absent, including about 30-percent of those nominated for an award. Instead, the promoters put all their effort into backing B-rated actors like Diya Mirza, Bipasha Basu, Arbaar Khan and Malaika Arora, Mallika Sherawat, and the elder Kapoors (the Randhir, Rajiv, and Rishi generation)...many who didn't even look like they wanted to be there. 

All in all, the people who put together the show did a great job. It looked great. The sets were great. For the most part, they were fairly cooperative. I just hope this year's IIFA in Singapore has a much better turn out. 

There's a little dirt on your upper lip there...

Moustachio. 'Stache. Moonchen. Lip eyebrow. Handlebars. Call it what you want, the mustache is a globally recognized symbol of masculinity. I suppose that's probably why the creators of the "Movember" campaign created the fund raising event. Not only is it gimmicky (you get men growing mustaches of various kinds for an entire month AND get them to document their progress while raising money), but it also fits: a generally male feature (although I must admit, I have seen a number of women  in my lifetime whose mustaches would make a lot of grown men cry) for a form of cancer that affects men.

One of my first brushes with this great male-lip-brush (see the humour here?!) came sometime when I was between four and six years old. My father decided to grow a mustache. Just a thin line above his upper lip. I'm not quite sure how I felt about it, though I'm sure I was scared shitless...almost like I was when he randomly shaved his head one day. Now, it's reasonably acceptable here in the West for men to grow mustaches. The mustache has had a history with artists and entertainers (Dali, Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin), naval and military officers, Italian barbers, and of course, the baddest mustache of them all (Hitler). But it's a feature that isn't so revered among many middle class South Asians.

For years (for the record, this still occasionally happens), I remember my mother cussing at me, sometimes chasing after me to shave (for the record, I've never grown a mustache. A beard and a goatee perhaps, but never a mustache). She'd noticed the hair above my lip getting thick, and offer this motherly quip - badmaash lagda...jaamat kar! Loosely translated, that means you look like a criminal...go shave! I'd taunt her, laugh, and eventually cave in. But I always wondered why she felt that way. The answer? Right there on the big screen.

Just like Hollywood had its good guys in white and its bad guys in black, Bollywood, too, has its clear distinguishing characteristics for the hero and the negative role (they still use those terms - the "hero" always wins the girl; "villain" just hurts, so they call it a "negative role"). The hero is always clean shaven, while the male in the negative role almost always has facial hair. I can think of very few exceptions where the protagonists in movies from the 60s, 70s, and 80s had facial hair (mustaches were part of some actors' overall persona, carried in from their personal lives), but you always knew who the lecherous, seedy, always up-to-no-good villain (I'm using the word here in this post because it's easier) was because of the mustache. Jeevan was a popular villain, who'd make the ends of his mustache all pointy like to show how he was scheming. Or Sadashiv Amrapurkar. He sometimes acted without it, but didn't look nearly as evil unless he had his sometimes grey, but mostly black lip chops. Mukesh Rishi would flip flop, with clean shaven good-guy roles, and other times as a mustachioed baddie.

But I guess over time, things have to change. There's been an evolution. Take the 2010 film Dabangg. BOTH the hero (Chulbul Pandey played by Salman Khan) and the villain (Chedi Singh played by Sonu Sood) have mustaches. And it seems the success of that film has spawned a whole new generation of handlebar growing heroes. Akshay Kumar is also sporting a 'stache in his Rowdy Rathore (which, on the surface, bears a *ahem* slight resemblance to Dabangg from the stunts and special effects right down to the leading actress and her coy-eyelash-batting). Apparently, Sonu Sood will also be gussied up in his latest release, Maximum, playing the protagonist with a pushbroom.

I dunno about you, but I don't get it. It's like good guys trying to get down and dirty, and the only way they know how is to grow a mustache. But it's also a bit confusing. It's hard to keep track who's who, after having it drilled into my head that only bad men come mustached. Plus, I kinda liked tradition...of having the good guys in one colour and the bad guys in another as much as I liked having the villains clean shaven and the baddies strut around their crumb catchers like they were untouchable. When they got their comeuppance, it made it all the more sweeter. Because that mustache made them who they were: evil.