Happy Monday! I had such a happy sunny weekend, and now I am trying to get back into work mindset.
This is where you get to ask me ANYTHING! What I did on my sunny weekend, what movies I’m watching next weekend, an outline of how a particular actor is or is not related to anyone else in the film industry. Just keep swinging back here all week as you think of things.
Now, question for you! I’m gonna give you an easy one, and then a hard one. First, the easy! Leap Day is this Saturday, what is an exciting personal Indian film related challenge that you would like to set for yourself for Saturday? Watch your first movie from a new language group? Finally watch that film you’ve been putting off? Figure out how to use Indiancine.ma?
I’ll tell you mine! I’m flying to NY/NJ and meeting up with some of you! Oh, and also, trying very hard to watch every single Ramesh Sippy movie even if none of you read the reviews. Still worth it for adding to my deeper knowledge of Hindi film!
Now, the hard question! Inspired by my watching Shaan, you can only pick one, who is the better husband? Shashi Kapoor, or Sunil Dutt?
Shashi is certainly the handsomer man, but I feel like his whole “my wife is dead and I have checked out of parenting and everything else in life” puts him behind Sunil’s “my wife is dead but my son is a drug addict and I will never ever give up on him” awesomeness.
dontcallitbollywood 
You can’t do this to me, Margaret.
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It is a well nigh impossible question, isn’t it?
Sticking with Sunil I think! He wasn’t bad as a young man:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcT12p452vx_TPAfPTY0rSEWdK5tps_UadYUaYmfWbMMPCcB-szh
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 8:23 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I owe it to Shashi to choose him because he is My Favourite, but ugh. I actually think Sunil has more sex appeal than Shashi, but don’t tell him that.
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Wait, don’t tell Sunil or don’t tell Shashi? Or maybe both? They are up in heaven right now eavesdropping on us and now it’s going to turn into all this high school drama between them, you just know it.
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 9:35 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Don’t tell either of them, Shashi will be sad and Sunil will get a big head. If only they’d fight for it.
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And also, sunil fell for & married an older woman who was far more famous than him, plus she was just coming off a 10 year openly acknowledged love affair with a married man. And he didn’t even blink.
They both make good husbands and family men, but sunil is the better single-dad and more badass as a human being overall.
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Would not have thought that here, in Shashi-land, Sunil would land a surprise win. I think this says good things about our objectivity.
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 11:03 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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They were the same age! Strictly speaking Nargis was 5 days older lol. Shashi actually did marry a woman five years older than him.
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4 years older! They married when she was 24 and he was 20. Oh Shashi! So sweet and young and dumb!
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 1:28 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Jennifer got to have sex with Shashi when he was 20, oh man.
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And then got pregnant immediately because, you know, Shashi!
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/hcBCDuDpqQqK25k_jLSmptKmNgQdcb0YFcgZ17iC8BXB9J-oOo8A5yoPvzB9ng7HsDciOL12r_mxgu_vMWUBsYpQUqOv1Pr76Pk–ERZaFyIvBY2sZAFfmyEh5DBhTcx
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 9:17 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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OMG, babies holding babies
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And refusing to look sad about it! Sweet sweet Shashi and Jennifer, parents 11 months after they were married and delighted about it.
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Must we choose? Can’t we just say that they were both good at something most men in their profession fail at?
But, if I must, I gotta stand up for my boy here. I’ve read a few interviews of his kids. The way Kunal, Karan and Sanjana speak about him makes me think he didn’t check out of fatherhood the way we think. They always sound very proud, protective and loving. Kunal, for example, had talked about how much fun they had shooting Ajooba, how the set was one big party. That was in 1991. But yeah, there was this persistent sadness in him that everybody around him was aware of and he couldn’t shake off. But he was still there for his kids. Their enduring love for him speak to that. And he was there for his grandchildren too. Karan had mentioned in an interview how towards the end, he would only be himself with his grandchildren.
Sunil is awesome too. He was a wonderful husband to Nargis. Given how conservative our society, including Bollywood is(despite pretending to be the opposite), he still married a very famous woman who was the mistress of another very famous, powerful man. That proves how brave he was and how strong his love for her was. He was everything she deserved. He was an wonderful father too. He was always there for his son, even when he ended up in very hot water for being a thoughtless moron.
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Thank goodness someone is standing up for Shashi!
I have a little cynical voice in my head that is saying maybe the reason we think they are such awesome husbands is because their wives dead young-ish, before they had a chance to stop being this perfect couple. But no, I think even if Jennifer and Nargis had outlived their husbands, they still would have had the perfect marriages.
I wanted to come up with a third option, and I really couldn’t! Sunil and Shashi stand alone.
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 11:55 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Thanks for the article tho. Cause it sent me on a googling expedition and I found these articles on how awesome Shashi was.
He refused the freaking National Award for his very first film Dharamputra(1961) because he thought he wasn’t good enough!!! I mean, look at the hoopla around filmfare right now and the accusations floating around that people are buying awards. And this guy turns down the National Award!!!
Then after the 1993 riots in Mumbai, his house co-op wanted to pass a resolution to prevent Muslims from living there. Guess who the one person who opposed the motion? Then there’s the time “Shabana Azmi, in a recent tribute, spoke of how he was the man who solved the Gita Nagar slum impasse by meeting the chief minister but quietly vanished when Azmi was thanking all her supporters.”
I had no freaking idea he was this badass!!!
https://www.lassiwithlavina.com/features/cinema/shashi-kapoor-real-man-in-a-reel-world/html
http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/an-actor-a-gentleman-and-a-man-of-integrity/article21336313.ece
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Let me introduce you to the “round up of post death tributes” DCIB posts!
https://dontcallitbollywood.com/2017/12/06/news-round-up-shashi-aftershocks/
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 1:28 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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đđđ Shashi was the best!
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Yes, I also don’t think either if these two fine men would’ve stopped loving their wives if they had been given the chance to grow old. In fact, I’m gonna guess that’s what they would’ve wanted more than anything else.
Look at this article. Have you read this one? Ripped my heart out.
“My wife was certainly better than me. I have alwÂays said that she was a better actress and a better human being. She had more strength, to bear all kinds of unhappiness in life. IF, INSTEAD OF MY WIFE, I HAD PASSED AWAY 14 YEARS AGO, I DONâT THINK SHE WOULD HAVE LASTED TILL NOW. LONELINESS CAN KILL YOU! It doesnât have to be just when you are alone, itâs the loneliness within. Thereâs a vacuum. You may be sitting with a 100 people, but you are still grieving inside. I donât think Jennifer would have been able to take it. I donât want to sound pompous but I feel she would have missed me more than I miss her. Everyone says a marriage has to be give and take, but she gave more than she took from me. I was a little selfish in that respect. I made her give more of herself.”
http://cineplot.com/love-never-dies-shashi-kapoor-on-jennifer-kendall-people-ask-me-why-didnt-i-remarry/
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I forgot, I gave Jennifer a whole post for her birthday once! Bonus data from Shashi’s biography, which is a quick happy read if you need one:
https://dontcallitbollywood.com/2019/02/28/jennifer-kendals-birthday-today-in-her-honor-here-are-some-things-i-learned-from-reading-shashis-biography/
On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 10:06 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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In case you or your readers hadn’t seen it yet, this is the trailer for the new Karishma Kapoor series, on ALTBalaji, starts in early March.
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I’m gonna make an argument for Shashi based purely on how his kids turned out. Yes, it’s probably not fair to blame the parents for the behavior of their adult children, but there’s no denying that Shashi raised kids who are quietly doing good things while Sunil…did not.
I’m in Alleppey getting ready to fly to Chennai to see Rekhs! This trip has been freaking amazing so far. I went to a Hindu temple for the first time yesterday (three, actually) and one of them had the entire Ramayana portrayed in a plaster frieze painted in bright colors. I also got to visit a school and it was so charming, the kids were super excited to meet an American and two teenage girls deputized themselves to be my guides and asked me if I knew Justin Bieber, lol. Before that I got to see elephants in the Periyar Tiger Reserve. And I toured the backwaters! And I’m not even touching on everything I’ve done so far on this trip.
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Just to be clear….you don’t know Justin Bieber, right?
To be fair to Sunil, all but one of his kids are doing great! One daughter married young-ish to a great guy and happily disappeared into anonymity, and the other daughter stayed home and married late and has a career in politics and charity and fundraising. Not as great as Shashi’s 100% success rate, but not terrible.
And I am so glad your trip is amazing! This is so exciting!
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Ha, I do not know Bieber! But my husband has seen him driving some expensive sports car around Hollywood.
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Close enough!
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 9:42 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Happy for you Alisa!
Arguing along the same lines, maybe Sunil’s blind support of his son resulted in Sanjay being such a problematic person. I’m not that familiar with the events of 1993, but that’s the generaI sense I get. It’s the same with Salim Khan and Salman I feel. Saw an interview of him where he was honest and philosophical about other topics, but was all ‘my son is so respectful and loving, can do no wrong’ when it came to Salman!
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