With their ethnically indeterminate looks and impeccable English, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan could be India’s first international movie stars, writes Anupama Chopra in The New York Times:
[Photo: Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Bachchan in Jodhaa Akbar]
Last October Aishwarya Bachchan grappled with a tough choice. The Bollywood star could either stay in Los Angeles to pursue a lead role in Will Smith’s new film, “Seven Pounds,” or she could return home to Mumbai to celebrate Karva Chauth, a daylong ceremonial fast that some married Hindu women observe as a prayer for their husband’s health and long life. (The observance is a new one for Ms. Bachchan; in April she married Abhishek Bachchan, an actor and the son of the Indian film star Amitabh Bachchan, a union that prompted Time magazine to describe the three as “Bollywood’s Father, Son and Holy Babe.”)
Ultimately Ms. Bachchan chose to return to Mumbai and starve with a smile. National television channels covered her first Karva Chauth as headline news. Two months later she shrugged off her loss in an interview. “You do what you have to do,” she said. “Feeling torn and thereby unhappy, confused or guilty is not something I want to feel. So you make your choices and go with it. You get some and some you don’t.”
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Aish did the right thing. Will Smith is an undercover Scientologist, isn’t he? Gross. I finally saw Jodha Akbar this weekend and Hrithik was so handsome, something that I’d noticed before, but now ever more so. Maybe he’s more attractive as he ages. Distractingly handsome, to the point of being even prettier than Aish.