Chak de romance!
The Hindu : Seventy-five years of exciting Hindi cinema. Seventy-five years of action-packed Indian cricket. When these two come together, it is a dream come true for the public and the media.We don’t know how much film stars know about the game or how much cricket stars appreciate good films. But the mutual attraction between the two kinds of stars has existed for several years.Cast your mind to the 1960s when starlet Anju Mahendru was the long-standing girl friend of our Number 1 heart throb, Rajesh Khanna. He chucked her for Dimple Kapadia and she announced her engagement to touring West Indian cricket genius, Gary Sobers. We thought it was all a publicity stunt to boost Anju’s sagging morale. Nothing came out of the romance; Gary set off to marry Australian Prudence while Anju remained…Anju.If Anju let her man go, another starlet, Nina Gupta did not. Her ‘catch’ was the equally impressive Viv Richards with Nina announcing in a popular weekly she wanted a child from the world’s greatest batsman. Indian feminists cheered. Well, they had a daughter, Viv visited her and the daughter regularly and Nina found a career in television. Marriage? Obviously, that was never on the cards. But there was a marriage between Pakistani opener Mohsin Khan and Bollywood star, Reena Roy.Must visitBollywood had been a sort of pilgrim centre for visiting Pakistan players; one of their captains, Imran Khan, briefly carried the torch for our own Zeenat Aman. Mohsin tried his hand at acting, failed. Reena was never happy in Pakistan, came back and the marriage ended after a custody battle for the daughter. Not a happy story.It was a happy story for Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and the Tagore family film star, Sharmila. The Prince wooed the showgirl for four years, she followed him on cricket tours of England, and finally they got married to become one of India’s show pieces, show biz…More
