On the seventh day, of course, she is seen bounding with unmatched joy, ready to indulge in the seven deadly sins across the seven continents.)But wait, today, men are proud feminists too. It usually starts with the girl worried, pensive and full of self-doubt.We’ve seen these ads for years now. Also, does anyone know how many fair scientists did the team that sent the shuttle in space have The writer is an author, film writer and a Mumbaikar. Somehow, in advertising, caste, creed, language, religion doesn’t matter — the only speed-breaker in the path of glory is your skin colour, the only deal-breaker is fairness. No matter how dark you are it reduces the melanin content with ingredients that know they have only seven days to do it. She’s a dark girl who can’t land a job (again, guys seem to be sailing through interviews). Not more. So advertising was given another task: to glam it up. Sadly, we’ll just have to wait a long time for advertising to raise its standards. Till she meets the seven day cream. The girl goes to meet her friend. He, of course, gives the perfect take and flashes his range of four expressions. Colleges assuring campus placements are just probably going to distribute fairness creams on graduation day. As she sits lost, her mother, father, sister and friend gives her a fairness cream. Heck, we’ve even sent our Wholesale Grinding machine Manufacturers space shuttle and gotten our own GPS. While foreigners sprawl on beach-recliners to get that all elusive tan, we have built ourselves a 2,500-crore industry of fairness products. And so is happiness.India is changing, we are told. The latest one shows a dad suggesting marriage to his daughter first thing in the morning (that’s not the absurd part). Have fair skin; will give job.Fairness ads border on the absurd.

A moment’s silence for feminism that died in 60 seconds. He notes that things have changed in Bollywood — it’s no longer the stuntman, but the hero who does the action himself.But fairness is too boring. We do not demand for covers in rock shows. Strangely, it is usually only girls who have a fairness problem at hand.In an age where we weigh our self-esteem and karma in likes and shares, instant-gratification is key. The friend astonishingly pulls out a fairness cream and while handing it to her says "kuch nahi kar sakti toh yeh le, shaadi kar le". She comes home depressed, wondering what’s wrong. "Mein job karna chahti hu" becomes "mein job karna chahti thi". Miraculously, she manages to get an interview with the same company and this time gets the job. Of course he’s a modern dad, he’s seeing possible matches on his iPad. Applies it. But one assuring glance from the well wisher is all it takes for her to use it. As luck would have it, her friend is much fairer (almost every fairness cream ad features a fairer friend who is carrying the fairness cream in her purse — as if they were just waiting to be asked). She now has everything she ever wanted. But look around and you see it is true in some measure. Clearly, beauty isn’t skin deep, it’s shallow. One thing, however that refuses to change is our advertising. That’s why, creams guarantee you fairness in exactly seven days. Guys somehow do not need to get fairer (of course, Fair and Handsome thought otherwise, but that’s for later). If Indian advertising is to be believed, Darwin had it wrong: "The fairest survive. The girl is desperate, though doubtful. Flowers bloom. Why bother with degrees and recommendation letters. The dad asks, "Why He’s found her a surgeon, who is 6’2. (The numbers vary, of course. The girl protests: she wants to do a job first." Not just survive, thrive.) They call it "fairness ka naya standard".

The ad has her show seven ascending expressions of happiness, each for the seven days. Skies clear. (Strangely, the packaging is black. She uses the cream." What else could she possibly want Have his children, already. Somehow, everyone else chooses to wear dull greys while she stands out in pinks and reds. Almost all of us have a phone. She has a job to land, for god’s sake. It ended with walking the red carpet, of course. And hired Yami Gautam to step up for it. The girl grows fairer, starts wearing pink and tells her dad she’s ready to marry — but after three years — because she needs that time to match the boy’s qualifications — all spoken through subtly with a reference of height. And hence there is Fair and Lovely with magnet action. But, of course, your face pays the price sometimes. (Courtesy today’s government, we are told that every eight minutes on radio with what seems to a never-ending campaign). At hand was fairness cream with a "make-upwala look". This very girl, before using the cream was an underachiever, a loser, a loner and maybe even constipated. And it’s a miracle — her life starts changing — her dresses become brighter, her room is bigger, there is a spring in her step, the music changes to soft and happy, and it’s not even particularly sunny that day (though armed with the cream, she doesn’t seem like she cares).) But according to ads, fairness can get you anything. Why settle for just fairness when you can have the whole package (The debate of whether celebrities should be responsible for what they endorse hadn’t raged when this ad came around in 2015. So how could they be behind And enter Sidharth Malhotra, who is dodging bullets on a film set. Not less. The girl has a very thoughtful, deep expression on her face like she remembered where she left her sunglasses on her last Manali trip. It’s just not working out for her.

Megosztás a facebookon

Amanullah invited me to an office in a shed-like building and exhorted me on the right of Kashmiris to form an independent republic.The most charismatic JKLF leader of that time, Maqbool Butt, was in an Indian prison charged with the murder of a police inspector in 1966. A large number of prominent Pakistani politicians turned up, along with hundreds of jihadis. He had chosen a large derelict looking restaurant for the meeting and had told me not to bring anyone.Amanullah Khan’s career peaked from then on till the first couple of years of the nineties decade.In Pakistan, it was proclaimed that the Kashmir movement had lost a great leader who had waged a heroic struggle for the liberation of Kashmir from India.Once the JKLF was finished in the Kashmir Valley, Amanullah was expendable. Some of Ama-nullah Khan’s former colleagues claimed that at the time of Mhatre’s murder, Amanullah Khan was working for the ISI, which was funding his European jaunts and anti-India campaign.He had brought along a pile of Kashmiri independence literature, photographs, a map of what independent Kashmir might look like and a few letterheads.Whether it was the ISI or Amanullah Khan who took the decision to murder Mhatre will never be known, but what is certain is it had the predictable reaction. The JKLF was gradually liquidated by Pakistan’s proxies and through information about JKLF fighters leaked to Indian security forces.

Its leaders will still be beating their chests and pretending their struggle is about independence.Amanullah met me again a few days later at Rawalpindi.I was apparently the target of their ire and Amanullah Khan told me to leave for the sake of my own safety. He signed off a very important looking letter on the JKLF letterhead, authorising me to publish whatever he had shared..His organisation, the JKLF, was now at best a token force on both sides of the Line of Control that divides the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Khan’s coffin was thereafter taken to his birthplace Gilgit for burial. He was not material for a mass leader, but clearly ideal for heading a clandestine movement.Once the insurgency was in full swing, Pakistan decided to pull the rug under the JKLF’s feet.There were indications that the then Pakistani dictator Gen.He had rattled the Indian government by once visiting Washington DC where he had threatened to bump off a host of Indian politicians, including Rajiv Gandhi. He was then the lion of Kashmir, inspiring Kashmiri youth to take up guns against the Indian establishment. The military and political backbone of the organisation had been broken many years ago by the Pakistani military and its proxies. The whole fracas seemed staged and I had no choice but to depart.This is just what the ISI wanted; the Kashmir Valley rose in protest after a long period of calm and the JKLF became the focus of the anti-India movement.The diplomat, Ravindra Mhatre, was abducted by Pakistani activists allegedly allied to Amanullah Khan’s JKLF, but who were actually in the payroll of Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). While he was at it, we were interrupted by a belligerent group of bearded individuals carrying placards and shouting anti-India slogans.The sad part is that Amanullah’s grand funeral had less to do with his contribution to the Kashmir cause than with the Pakistani establishment’s constant need to remind its people of the righteousness and nobility of the Kashmir cause. He played the part too, of a shadowy figure hounded by spies and potential assassins. People offered wreaths, some wept while others shouted pro-Kashmir slogans and promised to carry on the struggle. Zia ul Haq was trying to rake up an uprising in Kashmir following his successes in the Indian Punjab. Farooq Abdullah had resigned as chief minister and fled the Valley which was in full revolt.

The Indian public was outraged by the assassination of their diplomat and the government reacted in a knee-jerk manner by hanging Maqbool Butt five days later.Amanullah Khan had achieved considerable notoriety in India and fame in Pakistan during the late 1980s and the early days of the insurgency in Kashmir.I could not but help read with some cynicism accounts of thousands of Pakistanis dutifully turning up at Rawalpindi’s Liaqat Bagh to pay their last respects to Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Amanullah Khan, who breathed his last in a local hospital on April 26. Trouble is this will never be publicly acknowledged in the Kashmir Valley. He kept on shouting about independence, but nobody heard him anymore; the money too stopped flowing and he was forgotten, only to briefly resurrect after his death.I had met him during the height of his popularity in the spring of 1990 when the Kashmir insurgency had just flared up.I found the hagiography odd as Amanullah Khan had long been sidelined in Kashmiri politics and was for all practical purposes living the life of a recluse in Rawalpindi. He also had an odd charm, but it did not add up to charisma.Pakistan with the help of the Jamaat-e-Islam built up the pro-accession Hizbul Mujahideen and trained Pakistani jihadis to do more of the fighting in Kashmir. For, the initial slogan of the armed struggle led by the JKLF was for an independent Kashmir, whereas Pakistan’s military wanted Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan.

It was the JKLF that fired the first shots in the Kashmir Valley and led the armed uprising against the Indian state.Amanullah Khan was holed up in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the so-called Azad Jammu and Kashmir, which is a part of the region known here as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).I was in Islamabad at that time and had got permission from the Pakistan foreign office to visit Muzaffarabad and parts of PoK right up to the Line of Control.The JKLF, after kidnapping diplomat Mhatre, said they wished to negotiate Maqbool Butt’s release from prison, but before negotiations could even start, Mhatre’s bullet-ridden body was found dumped in a country lane.The coffin with his body was put on display where thousands gathered to offer funeral prayers. An issue was needed to rouse anti-India sentiments in the Kashmir Valley. He was late and in a very theatrical manner looked around as if to see if he was being followed.My memories of Amanullah would have been positive had it not been for the revelations by some of his former colleagues about his role in the assassination of an Indian diplomat in Birmingham in 1984.Looking back, I am reminded of a China Grinding machine Price smallish, dapper man whose bespectacled appearance reminded me more of a professor than a violent agitator.Looking back, it has been one long story of betrayal and deceit.

Megosztás a facebookon

’ Jenner had been in Barcelona to launch Mango’s new Spring 2016 campaign, which obviously Neymar did not want to miss.The Brazilian star seems to be pretty well-versed in the fashion icon stakes as he poses next to model Kendall Jenner. Indeed, as a fellow model, it's highly likely he asked more about fashion than Jenner did about football.Still fresh from his appearance at FIFA’s Ballon d’Or ceremony in Zurich in mid-January, spring bending machine Price Neymar chose once again to wear a bowler hat and bow tie.When you’re as fashionable on the pitch as Barcelona’s Neymar is it’s equally important to surround yourself with those who are setting trends off it. Followers of Neymar’s Instagram were drawn to his account on Friday when he posted a picture of him and Jenner side by side with a caption which read: ‘Nice to meet you too @kendalljenner..

Megosztás a facebookon