House fuel

Bipasha Basu may look like a bongshell that is a Bengali bombshell for you But she knows the price of vegetables and petrol So post the petrolhike she has decided to buy herself a bike No not the kind her exboyfriend John Abraham is seen vrooming by in The bicycle wins Biprsquos vote Says Bipasha ldquoI am definitely thinking of alternate modes of transport beyond my cars In fact I was just thinking of buying myself a bicycle The fact that I havenrsquot yet learnt how to drive motivates me even further to use nonpetro modes of transportation especially for shorter distances That would be fun and good exercise toordquo I like that bicycle Pedal power Bipasha Basu u00a0Yet if you ask most Bollywood stars the cost of a litre of petrol you might get blank stares huh in return Most big stars own a fleet of fancy cars parked under their homes with little or no knowledge of where the petrol comes from But for reasons other than saving money many of them have been resorting to lsquogo greenrsquo transportation Cycle ki sawari Fans reach to touch Bollywood actor Salman Khan as he prepares to ride a bicycle before the start of the inaugural Tour de Mumbai Cyclothon in Mumbai on February 21 2010 PicAFP Publicity Some months ago one saw director Imtiaz Ali and his leading man Ranbir Kapoor hop into a threewheeler with a battery of photographers behind them to capture this stupendous ode to going plebian Says a somewhat cynical filmmaker ldquoAll this travelling by autos and cycling down highways with photographers in hot pursuit is nothing but a publicity gimmick One recently read a report that Katrina Kaif hopped in an auto to catch an earlymorning flight when her driver played truant As for Imtiaz Ali in an auto if he travels by auto quite frequently as he claims why were there photographers around when he got into a rickshaw with Ranbir Could it have something to do with their film Rockstar being released at that timerdquo Cycling Salman Khan has been seen cycling around his home in Bandra oblivious to the hordes of fans and oglers Recently Shah Rukh Khan tried the same twowheeled exercise with his children As the Khan parivar cycled traffic on the roads came to a standstill with hundreds of fans opting to follow them Even if stars want to be ecofriendly they cannot They do not know how to And even if they do they canrsquot step out of their homes with their conservation plans It is in the movies that the lsquoaam juntarsquo gets to see stars economizing on fuel In Mani Ratnamrsquos Saathiya the romance between Vivek Oberoi and Rani Mukherjee was conducted on local trains Earlier on in Basu Chatterjeersquos Rajnigandha and Chhoti Si Baat Amol Palekar and Vidya Sinha got to know one another in Mumbairsquos BEST buses Lately very few Hindi films have shown stars resorting to transportation other than swish cars In Habib Faizalrsquos Do Dooni Chaar Rishi Kapoor rode a scooter throughout but dreamt of owning a car In Rumi Jaffreyrsquos political satire Gali Gali Mein Chor Hai Akshaye Khanna rode around on a rickety scooter Audiences didnrsquot think much of the plebian mode of transport for their hero The film bombed Says Jaffrey ldquoSomehow the concept of the hero as a common man doesnrsquot ricochet with the audience any longer In the past Rajesh Khanna and Amol Palekar repeatedly played guys next door in successful films like Rajnigandha and Anand They wore pyjamakurtas and rode buses and scooters Nowadays the heroes have to be larger than liferdquo Conservation It is unlikely we will get to see Salman Khan cycling in a film Or Shah Rukh Khan using public transport to travel In real life though some of them display a fair amount of conscientiousness about petrol conservation Says Neha Dhupia ldquoIrsquove always been fond of cycling because Irsquom conscious of fitness and the environment The hike in petrol prices is not just about transport It affects the consumer in every way possible We will be paying a heavy price for this hikerdquo Petrol Jackie Shroffrsquos young athletic son Tiger adds ldquoEven if petrol was cheaper I would prefer cycling Itrsquos good for the environment and me Also because of heavy traffic cycling gets you around faster But my mom doesnrsquot let me move around on a cyclerdquo Says Sonu Sood ldquoI was always cycling I tried to convince my friends to do the same Now theyrsquove no choice but to follow merdquo Neetu Chandra who is athletic by nature says ldquoI prefer to cycle Considering the petrol price my car would end up in a museum Maybe instead of car loans people should apply in banks for petrol loansrdquo Reality Filmmakeractor Amole Gupte has been walking if he can for health reasons ldquoNow I have no choicerdquo he says With old lines between formula and art films practically nonexistent a new genre of film is slick contemporary and very much like urban life itself Maybe a filmmaker would show the new reality people worrying about petrol prices looking at public transportation and even car pooling as an option And songs like mujhko bhi lift kara de would be replaced by mujhko bhi lift dila de and motorbike and car chases replaced by cycle chases