Snippets from India Today Conclave
- smashits.com
If the James Bond producers want the most beautiful woman in the world in their film, they may have to do without the smooch. Bollywood queen Aishwarya Rai is not ready for kissing the man who is licensed to kill. "It all depends in the script," says Rai about playing the Bond girl by doing whatever it takes. For the symbol of the modern Indian woman, acting in a Bond film will be as per her own rules. "There will be no difference; my decision on the script will be just as it applies to all others." Appearing on the cover of the Time magazine or participating on the jury of the Cannes film festival, Rai says, is all about representing the Indian persona at the global stage. "These are opportunities to present the Indian women internationally," says Rai, who added last-minute glamour to a media conclave in New Delhi, which concluded recently.Winning the Miss World crown, says the actress, who came as a replacement for the original speaker Shah Rukh Khan, was "a rediscovery" of the Indian women power, "where I belong." The actor of the globally acclaimed 'Devdas' and 'Choker Bali' spoke "straight from the heart" about "the India of ideas." If the Indian film industrythat makes 800 films a year and sells millions of tickets every week could guarantee the same measure in quality, it would be great indeed.
Publisher Sonny Mehta, president and editor-in-chief of Alfred A Knopf, the third largest media company in the United States, said without books, nations, whether they are developed or undeveloped, are doomed to failure. According to Mehta, who publishes two books "every working day" Rai could make people flock to book shops too if she or Amitabh Bachchan talk about books on the television like Oprah Winfrey does in the US. Mehta, who was mistaken for a messenger boy in his office in the first days of chief editorship at the Knopf, is always astonished that R.K. Narayan did not win a Nobel prize for literature!
