The Telegraph INDIA Jan 15th 2008

Tuesday , January 15 , 2008
Bolly ho!

A hard-hitting film about the streetchildren of Lahore; Shilpa Shetty continues to shine...
Shilpa Shetty
2008 is looking decidedly rosy for one British-Asian film-maker with Bollywood leanings. The British Film Institute (BFI) announced that it would be preserving two short films by Aneel Ahmad for posterity.
The otherwise little-known film-maker, who was brought up on a poor and often violent estate in Manchester, focuses on his experience of moving between the UK and his family’s origin, Pakistan. Ahmad first visited Lahore for a family wedding when he was young and felt so moved by the sight of streetchildren being lured into prostitution, that, having taught himself to shoot using borrowed camcorders, he returned to Manchester and badgered his regional screen agency for cash. His plan was to come back to Lahore and film what he had seen. In the end the agency, North West Vision, granted him his wish.

The result is Waiting For Sunrise, which follows the lives of Lahore streetchildren and yields images which viewers, writing on a BBC website, have called “very disturbing” and “hard to take” but “raw and effective”. The success was followed up by the fictional, but still Lahore-inspired, short Boot Polish — which takes a more Bolly-go-lucky countenance. A nightmare-cum-fairytale, it tells the tale of a prostitute in Lahore who falls into the cruel grip of a wealthy and obsessive client — before being rescued by a boy and swept to a happily-ever-after finale somewhere high in the snow-capped roof of the world.
Hearing that his films were to be treasured by the BFI, Ahmad said, “This is a great honour for me… if I die tomorrow at least I know someone, somewhere will have access to at least two of my films.”
SITA & SIT-UPS
If she dies tomorrow, at least Shilpa Shetty will have worked to keep goddess Sita in shape. While announcing in India that she is to play the Ramayana heroine in the upcoming film Hanuman, in Britain La Shetty was busy launching a yoga DVD.
Yo-yoing between sit-ups and Sita should also ensure she burns off any extra calories gained during the creation of yet another of her numerous money-spinners, Soul Curry. Yep, that’s Shilpa’s cookery book (recipes ideally to be made while wearing Shilpa’s perfume, S2).
One would have thought that the growing proliferation of such disparate gimmicks branded ‘Shilpa’ might herald the demise of Bollywood’s most exported B-lister. Not so. Without her, this year’s reincarnation of Celebrity Big Brother (the British TV-show which catapulted Shilpa to global stardom a year ago), Celebrity Hijack, is not doing well in the UK TV ratings. The show has reportedly flopped, its ratings having plummeted from over seven million to less than half that figure this year.
Indeed, Britain just can’t forget those events from January 2007. The latest is that the bully in chief, Jade Goody (renowned for calling her “Shilpa poppadum” on the show) has been voted fourth in the UK’s Trainwreck of the Year Awards.
One wonders whether on hearing the news, our celebrity yoga expert took a moment to breathe in… stretch… and release.
Jack Lamport