Lisa Ray, the beautiful green-eyed Canadian-Indian actress with the most lovely looks immortalised in the song ‘Afreen Afreen’ by Pakistani singer Nusret Fateh Ali Khan, left her blog-followers shell-shocked one fine day in September.
She announced that she was suffering from the incurable cancer, Multiple Myeloma. From that day, she has been penning down her fight with cancer on her blog, just for fellow-sufferers to find solace and perhaps for herself to come to terms with the disease.
Enter www.lisaraniray.wordpress.com and you would be welcomed by these words - Never Stop Fighting. You just cannot read through it without your eyes getting moist. It’s amusing that her blog readership has shot up in few months, ever since she began blogging about cancer.
Lisa is in Toronto. Back home, Big B is the unparalleled champion among film stars who use blogs to communicate with their fans.
www.bigb.bigadda.com has crossed 600 days. Minus a few days, Amitabh Bachchan has been finding time to scribble at least a sentence in his blog every day. Auro, his character in Pa, is what dominates his blog now.
Aamir Khan, who followed the footsteps of Big B, has an equally widely-read blog. www.aamirkhan.com/blog has everything from his films to opinions put down. Though Shah Rukh Khan had taken a dig at Aamir when he started blogging, the King Khan himself now blogs at the official website of his IPL team kolkataknightriders.com.
Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who is expected to make his appearance at the IFFK on Wednesday, also is a good blogger. ‘My diary’, which he writes in passionforcinema.com, surely reveals his love for cinema and updates readers on his new works.
From Salman Khan to Sonali Kulkarni (who is also expected at the IFFK), there are many Bollywood personalities who regularly blog.
Way down in Kerala, the first name that would naturally come to mind when speaking about blogging is Mammootty’s. Though not very consistent in updating his blog, when he finds time, Mammootty often goes for lengthy ones. His memories of Lohitadas and the latest, which is his experience of the making of ‘Pazhassi Raja’, are heavy reading. If you haven’t yet got a glimpse of it, then log on to blog.mammootty.com.
Lal Jose is another film personality in Malayalam film industry who has awakened to the possibility of blogs as a tool for mass communication. laljose.wordpress.com does not carry detailed writings, but it follows the director’s works and news without break.
Though fans would have expected Mohanlal to come up with a blog soon after Mammootty launched one, only his website has been launched so far. www.thecompleteactor.com is a complete menu on the actor.
For those discussions on films that usually happen in every nook and corner of a theatre or cafeteria, blogs are also a favourite place now. Boogola.com, which was launched by Mediact and the official blog of the festival, iffk.in/blog, offer a feel of the fest ambience happening outside.
For the a to z of IFFK details, you can log on to www.voiceofaudience.blogspot.com, started by a film lover Aadi Kiran.
The youngster has invested huge time and energy in the blog so that film lovers like him get to taste the IFFK online.
But no serious discussions have appeared so far in any of the IFFK-related blogs.
Maybe, four shows at seven theatres one day leave no room for discussions.
asha.nair@expressbuzz.com