love thy neighbour!!!

Of late, Indian actress Kareena Kapoor (the incredibly shrinking woman) has been making headlines everywhere. I surf the music channels and there she is flaunting her newly-found well-sculpted and toned body. I turn over to the news channel, and there are all these nutritionists and news anchors doing some big time discussions over the same actress's health regime. All are putting their heads together to unravel the mystery over her diet and exercise regime. And yes all the remaining Indian channels have moved one step ahead by calling her anorexic and creating tons of laughter by mocking her weight reduction in the standup comedies.
Our very own newspapers and magazines are also not very far behind in this regard. Not a single movie review (of Kareena's latest movie) published in our papers has missed mentioning the actress's fabulous body.

So it didn't come as a surprise to me when Kareena's svelte avatar talks started making rounds everywhere in the life of an average urban Nepali student like me. Everyone (guys included) has started gushing about the same actress right from our college bus rides to the canteen tables. Like so many girls, my skinny friends have started feeling 'fat'. They find their invisible bellies bulging out and have made resolutions to score a svelte figure like Kareena's by this summer. (All the best to them!!!)

When Hollywood beauties were taking extreme measures and scored fabulously toned body, we read about it and simply gushed "Lucky girls!!" But when an actress from our neighboring country did the same, we have driven ourselves into frenzy. This is a clear evidence of the influencing power Indian media has over us.

No matter how much we try showing more penchant to Western media in comparison to our neighbouring country's media, we cannot remain untouched by the day-to-day effect it has on us. We love Bollywood movies, Bollywood music blaze in our FM radio stations, Indian commercials make us appreciate their wit and Bollywood gossips never fail to make headlines in our national dailies

The majority of what we hear, read and see in our country's media happen to take a cue or two from the Indian media. A few years back when the first ever reality game show 'Kaun Banega Crorepati' hit the Indian television screen, one of our television channels came up with a similar kind of show, which unfortunately didn't quite garner that much of success. After that we've witnessed host of such 'inspired' versions of Indian reality shows and television soaps making rounds in our Nepali television channels. And given the ever increasing number of tried and tested concepts of Indian media still giving ample doses of 'inspiration' to our media, this trend of being 'inspired' is unlikely to stop in the near future.

However, it would be a pleasant surprise for us, if the so-called 'top notch' Kollywood actresses would also cue in for some fitness and fashion guidelines from the svelte divas of our neighboring country.