Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Filming in India was one big adventure. For 'The Cheetah Girls', we were in Mumbai for two weeks, then Rajasthan for six weeks. Every day after shooting, I would hop into a rickshaw and start exploring the city. I even learned a bit of Hindi. It's such an amazing place to visit.
Osama Bin Laden was found hiding in a house compound in Pakistan by American forces. Muammar Gaddafi was captured by rebel militia while hiding in a drain underneath a road in Libya. And Pakistani starlet Veena Malik was found by the Indian media hiding in a suburban hotel in Mumbai.
India - I've always felt at home there. Delhi and Mumbai and the Taj Mahal are all incredible - but it's the people I love. Indians are so interesting and accommodating and friendly. The best hotel I've stayed at there is the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur: its architecture is unbelievable.
I said the export benefit should go to all the farmers in the country through the mills spread across the country, in states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. Now what happens? This benefit goes to those mills or export houses in Mumbai. Or in Chennai or in Bangalore.
I went all out to help these migrants because I was a migrant, too, who came to Mumbai with a lot of dreams. When I saw photographs of their sufferings and read heart-wrenching stories of how they are walking thousands of kilometers without food and water, it reminded me of my early days.
More people are asking me to come and sing for them, so obviously I am getting more work. But apart from singing, I have been parallely programming and producing music tracks and assisting music directors. That is my bread and butter, which is how I survived in Mumbai. Now I can't leave it.
When I came back to Mumbai after boarding school, I was 16 and I picked up weight training and yoga. This is when I also started dance classes and Pilates and then I started doing different workouts every month. I am now proficient in kick boxing, gymnastics, classical dance as well as yoga.
I had an experience which I could not explain to myself and to others while I was on my way back from a south Mumbai party. It was near Haji Ali. All six of us who were travelling went through this. And this experience which I went through became the vital ingredient of the story of 'Talaash'.
I was born in Faridabad but brought up in Delhi and Mumbai. My father had been living hand-to-mouth and literally slept on railway platforms when he came to Mumbai for the first time to become a film singer. My parents were both singers; they sang together and fell in love due to their singing.
My lowest point came when I shifted to Mumbai in 1993. Nothing was happening. This is right after I did 'Bandit Queen.' I had no way to tell people that I know my job. There was no casting department here. All the commercial films that were happening in those days did not have any place for me.
We are not only having a great audience for Punjabi films in north India but we are also seeing growth in other places like Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Indore, etc. And the overseas audiences have always been good for us. Without them we couldn't have taken Punjabi cinema to such heights.
In the United States in 2009, more than 10.2 billion trips were taken on transit trains and buses. So far, the nation has not experienced a major transit attack since Sept. 11, but the March 2010 Moscow subway bombings and earlier train attacks in London and Mumbai show that we must be prepared.
It used to bug me that I couldn't even afford to take my family for a proper holiday. I didn't have any professional knowledge, and getting a photographer's job in a magazine was out of the question. So, armed with a Pentax K1000, I started going to various maidans of Mumbai, looking for subjects.
I was 14-15 when I first saw Michael Jackson dance, and I thought, 'How can he move like that?' I started following him. We didn't have TV in those days, and could access videos on VCR. But who in Gujarat would keep a MJ tape? After a year or so, I knew somebody from Mumbai who got that tape for me.
I was born there and I moved away in 1990 when I was seven years old. After that my family moved away from there to Delhi and Mumbai. Now, only a handful of relatives live in Kashmir and we are constantly worried about them. It pains me to see that my birth-place is not a safe place to be in anymore.
I'm very loyal to my south fans and the industry there. So, it's hard for me leave all the love, respect, and admiration and shift base here. I'm a Mumbai girl and have lived here for most of my life. At the same time, I've spent 10 years of my life in the South and feel like a south Indian at heart.
I came to Mumbai in 2000 to do a hotel management course. Following this, I worked as a marketing executive with Hotel Sheraton in Muscat for a year. It was in 2004 that I participated in the Gladrags Mr. India contest and bagged the most popular model award. After that, I did few ramp shows and ads.
I have grown up in Delhi in a way, and I keep coming here often. But, and I am sorry to say, I'll always be nervous when in Delhi. In my college days, I have had my bum pinched around so many times. So yes, in Mumbai, I can just walk around and do what I want to do, but in Delhi I'll always be scared.
I went to Mumbai thinking I will be away from media and fans, but right from the Governor of Maharashtra to aam janata, at least 60 people would come to visit me every day. There were calls, messages and I was so touched. I didn't know that people loved me so much and they want to see me back in action.
At the age of 16, I ran from my house, did odd jobs till l landed work on television and then in film industry. My first job was at an STD booth in Delhi. Then I came to Mumbai, where I distributed DVDs, and that is when I got my first TV show offer, 'Left Right Left.' I have never planned things in my career.
This rise of the new global mega-rich is happening as established institutions are falling. The fall runs the gamut from the music business and traditional media to the Detroit automakers who find themselves obsolete, outmaneuvered, and out-priced by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Shanghai, and even Siberia.
When I used to teach yoga in Bangalore and Mumbai, I noticed many clients struggling to cope with their weight. During some days, they would come in with plans to work out harder than usual because of events they'd have to attend later that week. The insecurity of appearance is something everyone goes through... even I.
Actors should stop complaining about nepotism. I am uneducated - I was asked to leave school in Class 11. I came to Mumbai with only Rs 300, yet there is no one in this industry who has not been nice to me. From filmmakers who have given me work to people who have given me advice, I feel blessed to have them in my life.
I was spending a lot of time in Mumbai after I met my husband, who is Indian, and while parts of the city were prospering like crazy, I couldn't quite make out how the new wealth had changed the prospects of the majority of city residents who lived in slums. So after a few years I stopped wondering and started reporting.
In the early '90s, I was disillusioned after the blasts and riots in Mumbai. I was in college and started thinking that religion was the root cause of all these evils. While my father told me not to blame religion because of a few bad people, I wasn't convinced. The faith was restored after I started writing my first book.
After 'Chandni Bar' there was a shutdown of such bars in Mumbai. After 'Page 3' people started avoiding such events. 'Traffic Signal' exposed the money flow through the mafia. I'm not apologetic about the brutal truth in my films. Almost 70% of my films are based on reality, and 30% I fictionalize or change to suit my film.
'Jigarthanda' will be the first in the Kannada industry to do this type of an experiment. All these days we use to do our recordings in Mumbai, Hyderabad, or in Chennai. But this time we have recorded in three different countries: Spain, Italy and the U.S. We have used around 50 foreign spring orchestra including violins, etc.
I've had fans do some pretty awesome things... I once had a fan do a mock proposal for me in Mumbai, inside a McDonalds... and I've had fans give me some precious things. I had one fan give me her mother's ring; I've gotten some pretty intense stuff. And I always get drawings and scrapbooks from fans, which is also pretty cool.
If Bombay can become Mumbai, Bangalore can become Bengaluru, Madras can become Chennai, and Calcutta can become Kolkota, there is no reason why Allahabad should not become Prayagraj and Faizabad should not become Ayodhya. To re-establish our original identity, we have renamed these places. I am happy that people have welcomed this.
My husband Farhan Azmi is a restaurateur and owns three restaurants in Mumbai. After we got married, we started planning a cafe, Chai Cofi, and got busy in executing it. It is not easy to open a restaurant. I always wanted to get into the business of restaurants and was fortunate enough that Farhan's knowledge taught me a lot of things.
In the way in which we are living in a much more explosive and more tension-filled society, a society that is driven with more and more contradictions, it is but unavoidable that some of this will also come into cinema. I would, in fact, argue that a part of it is borrowed from Hollywood. It's as if Quentin Tarantino has come to Mumbai.
In every conversation I've had - with housewives in Mumbai, with middle-class people, upper-class, in the slums - everyone says there is an underlying consciousness of karma. That people believe in karma - that what you're putting out is going to come back. If I do something to you, the energy of it is going to come back to me in the future.
When we talk about 9/11 and 26/11 - which is the shorthand for the Mumbai attacks in 2008 - we're talking about the most successful terrorist attacks in history. When you start trying to study the most successful event of its kind, it actually doesn't make for great fiction because there isn't the kind of failure in it that fiction thrives on.
I told my father I wanted to go to the stock market. My father reacted by telling me not to ask him or any of his friends for money. He, however, told me that I could live in the house in Mumbai and that if I did not do well in the market I could always earn my livelihood as chartered accountant. This sense of security really drove me in life.
I have seen extreme lows because of factors that were not in my hands - be it not having money to buy my first bike, dropping out of a prestigious engineering college without having a single rupee in my bank account, living with seven boys in a single-room kitchen in Mumbai, or eating nothing but khichdi every day. But I cherish all those moments.
