Abu Salem ‘hurt’ by Monica’s behaviour on Bigg Boss

After actor Monica Bedi got entry into the reality show, Big Boss, for the second time, extradited gangster Abu Salem said he was “perplexed with her liaison with other men in the show”. Salem on Thursday sent a fresh notice to Bedi saying that he is “mentally tortured and deeply hurt” whenever she denies that she was ever married to him. Salem in the notice claimed that they got married in a Los Angeles mosque in November 2000. “If Monica wants to go ahead with her life, she’s is free to demand talaq,” he added.

Bedi, in several interviews to the media after her exit from the show had said that she had known Salem for many years, but never married him.

Salem in the notice claimed that his anguish had been “multiplied manifold” since he was unable to communicate with Bedi due to his imprisonment. Salem has been lodged at Arthur Road Jail ever since his deportation from Portugal in November 2005. There're several murder and terrorism cases pending against him.

Salem in his earlier notice had also made a mention of his displeasure with Bedi for her continuous statements to the media. In interviews to the media, she had said that she was “single” and not married to Salem.

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Briefs - Rekha to make television debut

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Here is a round-up of Bollywood news from Indian newspapers on Wednesday, Oct 15. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

REKHA ON TV - Actress Rekha is set to make her television debut soon, the Mumbai Mirror reported.

The actress told the paper she is scheduled to appear on a television show but did not give further details.

SRK’S DUBAI SHOW - The Germany and Spain legs of actor Shah Rukh Khan’s “Temptations Reloaded” tour have been cancelled, the Mumbai Mirror reported.

Show organiser Karim Morani was quoted as saying there will now be only one show in Dubai.

NAUGHTY GOVINDA - Film maker Jag Mundhra is directing Govinda in “Naughty @ 40,” a film about a 40-year-old bachelor infatuated by a young girl, the Times of India reported.

After twenty days of shooting in London, the film’s unit will now shift to India, the paper said.

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A. R. Rahman launches reality show for budding musicians

New Delhi, Oct.15 (ANI): Noted music composer A. R. Rahman and Phat Phish, an integrated entertainment and communication company, have joined hands to launch India’’s biggest reality show of its kind –”The Big Band”.

The official announcement was made in the national capital on Tuesday.

The reality show, which is slate to provide ethnic and contemporary musicians a credible platform, will be telecast on Doordarshan, the national television channel, after mid-November.

“Like the success of Rabi and other albums there is a huge audience waiting for this kind of music. And we are doing it in bits and pieces. We decided to launch this massive hunt to get the whole of country and South Asia to get to know the potential of this music. It is unique and never done in history” said K. R. Harish, Managing Director of Phat Phish.

The Big Band aims at lending a new identity to Indian television and web cast history by all measures of budget, viewership, regional breadth and diversity. It also aims to enliven the hopes, dreams and aspirations of budding musicians.

“This show will be based on an indigenous format. It will provide a platform for nurturing and building musical talent across languages and the broad genres. We have seen so many shows in every channel and what makes this different is that we come up with the idea of discovering brands in the country. There are other countries involved as well that make it all the more exciting,” said A. R. Rahman.

“What makes this different are the bands from all over India and outside India and there is also a possibility of cross cultural exchange. India is the young nation. So this is the right time to see,” added A. R. Rahman, music director.

Rehman informed that presently he was completing an album that was content for a mobile company having various tracks in it.

This show will be presented as a travelogue through A R Rahman’’s eyes as his journey across 15 cities of India in course of the hunting the talent for The Big Band.

This show would be telecast in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia and is open to participation from these countries.

To participate in The Big Band, bands must have between 2 to 10 band members with at least one lead singer. They must submit three tunes.

Short listed bands will be invited to the first stage audition where they will be asked to perform any of the three pieces that the judges ask them to play.

The winning band in the talent hunt show will get a three-year recording contract with Phat Phish Records which includes end-to-end artist management , upto 3 albums and 6 music videos, tours and concerts on the national and international stage.

The top bands will walk away with prizes (including cash) worth rupees 10 million awarded proportionately through a pyramid structure.

For information on rules and requirements for participation in the contest , the band groups can log on to www.bigbandindia.com.

The hunt for the talented band members has already commenced and the last date for screening of entrants list is Nov.15.

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NDTV Imagine ties up with Balaji Teleflims

NDTV Imagine today announced that Balaji Telefilms will produce a prime-time daily on the channel. The creative team of NDTV Imagine and Balaji Telefilms have had a successful relationship in the past, creating some of the most popular and highly rated shows on Indian television. The show which will air at 10.30 pm is a daily prime time drama and is slated to go on-air in a couple of weeks.

Announcing the association with Balaji Telefilms, Shailja Kejriwal, EVP- Content, NDTV Imagine said, "We are delighted to be working with Ekta once again. She has a great understanding of the pulse of our viewers and together we will create stories that will refresh and delight our audience. It is also quite a coincidence that the first time we interacted with Ekta was for the 10.30 pm slot, just like this one."Adds Ekta Kapoor of Balaji Telefilms, "This is like home coming; to be back working with Sameer and Shailja. They are the ones who gave me my first break and I treat them like my bosses. I am pleased to be working with them again as they give me all the support and freedom and I will work with the same passion as I used to earlier".

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It's Showtime

It has everything that an Indian television show could hope for: Controversial characters, ‘item girls’, a politician’s son flirting with a mobster’s moll, kisses and the metaphorical cloak-and-dagger.

There was one potboiler ingredient missing and it fell into place on Saturday: A police complaint accusing Bigg Boss 2 of being obscene.

The police in Lonavla, where the show is being shot, will be busy from Tuesday watching the serial closely, reading the script, scanning reams of footage looking to arrest that elusive creature of Indian law: obscenity.

Mumbai Youth Congress Committee President Sunil Ahire had filed a complaint at the Andheri police station against the show, the central star of which is Rahul Mahajan, son of the late Pramod Mahajan who was one the foremost leaders of Ahire’s rival party BJP. The case was shifted to Lonavla on Monday.

Ahire claimed on Monday that his party leaders had roundly cheered his moral stance. “His main objections are to the
swimming pool, massage and the dance scenes,” said Police Inspector Ashok Jadhav of the Andheri police station.

In all this, the two-month-old channel, Colors, have dislodged Zee as No 2 with a 19.9 per cent share in the general entertainment category for the week ending October 4, according to data available with television viewership measurement agency TAM.

Bigg Boss 2, along with the channel’s bigger hits Balika Vadhu and Jai Sri Krishna, are powering its astounding surge.
“We put non-fiction shows on weekdays, an unconventional move that paid off. Fresh treatment of different content certainly helped us,” said Ashvini Yardi, senior VP, Colors. “About Bigg Boss, we are taking care to follow guidelines and not offend any of our viewers.”

The channel was also aggressively marketed and distributed, she said.

Meanwhile, Ahire told Hindustan Times that he would be hiring a good lawyer so that the accused did not get away easily.

“We are doing our follow-ups with the police. We want them to act swiftly,” he said.

While Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam had startled his party by deciding to participate in Bigg Boss, he was evicted in the first week without much controversy.

However, he seems to have taken it to the larger political stage by making it an issue between the Congress and the BJP. He has openly attacked the organisers for making Bigg Boss “obscene”.

Rahul’s dalliances on the show are fuelling the fight. Rahul was introduced as a “young neta’’ by Bigg Boss host Shilpa Shetty when the contestants first entered the Bigg Boss house in Lonavla. Through the past eight weeks, Rahul has been talking of an image change and positioning himself as a youth icon.

But the Congress might have jumped the gun a bit. The BJP was quick to distance itself from Rahul, labelling it as his personal venture. “This has nothing to do with our party,’’ said BJP’s Maharashtra President Nitin Gadkari.

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