Sharon Stone’s comments on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival that the earthquake in China was a result of ‘bad karma’ kicked off a storm that eventually had the actress issue an apology. But what is karma, and more specifically, what is bad karma? The BBC Magazine digs deep.
Sharon Stone claims the earthquake in China is the result of bad karma for its treatment of Tibetans. Is her definition - “when you are not nice, bad things happen to you” - correct?
Radiohead sings of the “karma police”, called in to arrest those who upset Thom Yorke: “This is what you get when you mess with us.” And Boy George warbles about a “karma chameleon”, in a toxic relationship because he’s not “so sweet” anymore.
Cause and effect, see. Actions have consequences.
And Sharon Stone, a convert to Buddhism, has claimed - to much criticism - that the earthquake that killed at least 68,000 people in China was bad karma for Beijing policy in Tibet. “I thought, is that karma - when you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?” she mused at the Cannes Film Festival.
Karma is an important concept for Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. Translated from the Sanskrit, it means simply “action”. Because karma is used in a number of ways and contexts - even among different branches of Buddhism - this can be confusing.
Author, designer, mother, wife, Shobhaa Dé has a way of challenging stereotypes and reinventing her persona. At 60, having just published her new book, Superstar India: From Incredible to Unstoppable, she says life is still full of possibilities. Suchitra Behal in The HIndu:
She feels women have a chameleon-like quality that allows them to adapt to any situation. It is perhaps this very quality that makes author, designer, mother, wife (not necessarily in that order), Shobhaa Dé change her roles ever so frequently. Like Madonna, Dé too has that something which makes her challenge stereotypes and reinvent her persona to do something that she wants to. “I refuse to be a kindly granny fading into oblivion. I want women to know that it is possible to live life at 60. Sixty, my dear, is the new 40,” says Dé, tossing her mane. Or, as Meryl Streep famously remarked in “The Devil Wears Prada”, ‘Everybody wants to be us’.
Known for her rather provocative style of writing, Dé who has so far written only fiction, much of it based on the glamour of Bollywood, has switched gear and written a book based on India and its 60 years. It is no coincidence that the book is being published in her 60th year too. “India and my journey has been together. I was born in an independent India and I want our young generation to invest in this country. That is my mission,” remarks Dé.
Amitabh Bachchan joins a growing legion of bloggers to write about his family, things he feels strongly about and as a platform to reply to his critics (including a swipe at filmstar-politician Shatrughan Sinha).
In one of his posts he talks about the Marathi-non Marathi controversy whipped up by Raj Thackeray, saying that ‘discrimination of any kind is not acceptable to me’.
Hosted by BigAdda (which is owned by good friend Anil Ambani) and just one week old, Big B’s blog is a super-duper hit with comments pouring in from ‘Poland to Pakistan’.
Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie has been spotted arm in arm with another stunning young model, Aimee Mullins. The 31-year-old American was born without any fibulas and had her legs amputated below the knee when she was one year old. She has since set records for the 100m, 200m and long jump at the 1996 Paralympics, and embarked on a successful career as a public speaker.
In 1999, she modelled for British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and has been named one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People.
Indian American actor and producer Kal Penn aka Kalpen Suresh Modi has another tag to his I.D. — professor. Last seen in Mira Nair’s The Namesake, Penn is currently on campus at the University of Pennsylvania, teaching a class on Asian Americans in the Media.
Penn at UPenn (aargh, terrible) hopes to bring the perspective of a Hollywood insider to his class. Amardeep Singhattended an open Q&A session with the actor:
This past Sunday I went down to the University of Pennsylvania for a rare, open Q&A session with Kal Penn. As readers may remember from Anna’s earlier post on the subject, Penn is at Penn this spring, teaching a class on representations of Asian Americans in the Media. He’s also shooting episodes of “House” (go, House), and stumping for Obama in his free time, though with that schedule I’m not sure how he has any.
As I understand it, there was initially some controversy about the class — is this going to be a stunt, or a real asset to a the Asian American Studies curriculum?
To read a February 21 issue of Penn Current which has a feature by Heather A. Davis on a man The New York Times describes as a ‘hip young movie star’ click here.
Finally, Penn’s new movie, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, is due for an April 25 release. The film revolves around Kumar Patel — a ‘man of colour’ and, therefore, suspicious — being mistaken for a bomb-carrying terrorist (Penn played the role of a teenage terrorist, Ahmed Amar, in the sixth season of the hit TV series 24)while aboard a flight to Amsterdam. Thrown into Guantanamo Bay with his friend Harold (played by John Cho), the duo manage to escape and finally end up in the ranch of George W Bush.
He might run a slew of tabloids but Rupert Murdoch’s own private life has been pretty much off-limits. With the publication of a kiss-and-tell book (Rupert’s Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife, Penguin Books, 2008), former Australian journalist Bruce Dover goes where few men have gone before. Eric Elis reviews the book in The Asia Sentinel.
Few of Rupert Murdoch’s former employees are eager to write about him. Likewise, few of his publications are eager to review a book about him.This review was turned down by the Far Eastern Economic Review, which is part of Murdoch-owned Dow Jones, after it was initially accepted.Nor has it been reviewed by the Murdoch-owned Australian or the Australian Literary Review.
Such is the real or imagined damage that Rupert Murdoch could inflict on a media career that few of his minions have been so bold as to write a kiss-and-tell account of their time at his elbow.
I can think of only one; Harold Evans, the ex-editor of London’s Sunday Times who Murdoch tapped to be editor of London’s Times after buying it in 1981. Evans lasted a year, resigning in high dudgeon over the editorial independence the man Britons call “The Dirty Digger” — pace his Australian antecedents — supposedly guaranteed to secure the purchase.
Evans’ splenetic book Good Times, Bad Times became a best seller and his joust with Murdoch did his career no harm — he later ran Random House, edited some worthy U.S magazines and penned magisterial histories. Like Murdoch, he became a naturalized American. Unlike Murdoch, he was knighted by the British establishment in 2004 for “services to journalism.” There are other tomes posing as Murdoch insiders like ex-Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil’s Full Disclosure and the hugely funny Stick It Up Your Punter: The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper but they are better assessed as snapshot newspaper biographies.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, often known simply as “Maharishi” or “The Maharishi,” achieved world renown as the Indian guru who inspired the Beatles and was said to have persuaded them to give up drugs. He has died has died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, and is believed to have been around 90.
In the summer of 1967, the year of Flower Power and Sergeant Pepper, he made headlines when the four Beatles, with their wives and girlfriends, as well as Mick Jagger, Jane Asher and Marianne Faithful, followed the whiskered Swami from London to Bangor in Wales to sit very publicly at his feet imbibing his message of universal love and peace. The Beatles announced that they had decided to abandon LSD: “We think we’re finding new ways of getting there.”
Namita Bhandare in the Hindustan Times questions the wisdom of film star Aamir Khan’s presence as a delegate at the Jaipur Literature Festival
I yield to nobody in my regard for Aamir Khan as a fundamentally decent human being. I doff my (metaphorical) hat at his courage to follow his politics and I applaud from my heart at Taare Zameen Par (TZP) as a sensitive, socially-relevant film that every parent, teacher and thinking adult should watch.
Yet, even I have to question the wisdom of Khan’s opting to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival recently, not as a participant — because surely it was his right to attend an event that has free entry for all — but as a delegate.
Now Khan may be a fine actor and a sensitive director, but he’s no writer; not at least to the best of anyone’s knowledge although he does post occasionally on his blog. His conversation with Tehelka’s Shoma Chaudhury had little to do with books (though someone from the audience did ask what he had read in recent times) and more to do with films, particularly TZP. Quite clearly, even Shoma, a lit fest veteran, was aware of the awkwardness, beginning her conversation by wondering aloud what Aamir was doing at a festival that celebrates literature.
Actor Aamir Khan on his New Year resolutions, shooting for his new film, and India’s cricket win against Australia — all in his blog
My God! The past few months have been quite a ride. And the last month the most exciting, nerve racking, exhausting, rejuvenating, draining, enriching. Am I ever going to recover? I feel like I’ve been stuffed into a washing machine which doesn’t have an off button. After this I really need to be put out to dry in the sun and left alone. But no such luck. I start shooting for GHAJINI on the 22nd. So…
Let me take baby steps towards recovery.
First things first… I have just smoked my last cigarette before sending this post. YES I HAVE FINALLY KICKED THE BAD HABIT!!! I know I know, I can already hear all of y’all scream and shout. I was supposed to give up on 31st. But I didn’t (which is one of the reasons I was avoiding posting). I tried my best… but I”m sorry I couldn’t then… but I have now… so please don’t give me grief… instead support me now. more
Smita Prakash of ANI on what makes Pakistani men so appealing
Britney Spears, the once hot and happening blonde pop star, has a Pakistani boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, wants to convert to Islam and move to Pakistan.
Princess Diana’s great love was a British doctor of Pakistani origin, Hasnat Khan, whom she desperately wanted to marry say her friends and live in Pakistan. Jemima Khan, the lush lipped, luxurious maned blonde, actually married a Pakistani, the hottie Imran Khan and lived in Pakistan, covering her head and wearing diaphanous salwar kameezes. What is it with blonde beauties and Pakistani men? Why is Pakistan such a chick magnet?
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Buddhism, Celebrity | Tagged: Buddhism, Sharon Stone, karma, bad karma | 
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