Deepika Padukone Takes Up Initiative to Create Awareness about Anxiety, Depression

Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone is gearing up to take up the initiative to create awareness about anxiety and depression, following her own "breakdown" during the shoot of "Happy New Year".

Rare picture of Deepika PadukoneInstagram

 Deepika revealed that she suffered depression at the beginning of her career in Bollywood but successfully recovered from it. The actress says there are a lot of people in India, who are suffering from this mental disorder and she will work on creating awareness among them.
"I am now working on an initiative to create awareness about anxiety and depression and help people. My team is working with me to formulate a plan, which will be unveiled soon," the actress said.
Deepika, the daughter of former badminton player Prakash Padukone, started her career as a model and made her acting debut with Kannda film "Aishwarya" in 2006. In 2007, she forayed into Bollywood through "Om Shanti Om", which was a big hit at the box office.
Following this huge success, Deepika was flooded with many Bollywood offers. Though she featured in over 10 Hindi movies, she could not make it big in the initial years. However, in 2013, the lady struck gold with four back-to-back blockbuster movies such as "Race 2", "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani", "Chennai Express" and "Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela".
At the beginning of 2014, Deepika battled depression. "In early 2014, while I was being appreciated for my work, one morning, I woke up feeling different. A day earlier, I had fainted due to exhaustion; it was all downhill from there. I felt a strange emptiness in my stomach," she told HT.

Later, she consulted a few psychologists such as Anna Chandy and Dr Shyam Bhatt from Bengaluru. She took a break from her work for a couple of months and spent time with her family, which helped her recover.
Talking about taking the initiative, Deepika said, "My personal experience as well as my friend's death urged me to take up this issue, which isn't usually talked about. There is shame and stigma attached to talking about depression. In fact, one in every four people suffers from anxiety and depression."

 

'I' review: The pace is brisk, the set pieces thrilling making it entertaining 

Cast: Vikram and Amy Jackson
Director: Shankar
The highly anticipated romantic thriller I from visionary Tamil director Shankar is a work of staggering ambition, somewhat weighed down by the filmmaker's own indulgence. Clocking in at a butt-numbing three hours and six minutes, the film works off a busy story that's centered on Lingesan (Vikram), a local bodybuilder from Chennai's KK Nagar, who goes from winning the Mr Tamil Nadu title to winning the attention of his longtime crush, a supermodel named Diya (Amy Jackson).

Before reaching the long-winded yet predictable love story that inevitably ensues, the first hour of I is unabashed fun.

Before reaching the long-winded yet predictable love story that inevitably ensues, the first hour of I is unabashed fun. At one point during a brawl between our hero and an army of oiled musclemen, Lingesan proudly lifts two vanquished rivals on both ends of an iron rod like a barbell. In an imaginatively filmed song sequence, nifty special effects are employed to convey our protagonist's all-consuming obsession with the heroine. What's not to like? The pace is brisk, the set pieces thrilling, and no apologies are made for the many double meaning jokes provided by our hero's best friend (Santhanam).
But all this is just window dressing for what resides at the core of this film- a revenge plot. His relationship with Diya and his new career as a successful model sees Lingesan make a string of enemies who subsequently gang up and ruthlessly disfigure him to teach him a lesson. Now hunchbacked and covered in plum-sized warts, Lingesan will pick them off one by one, dispensing his own brand of fitting justice to his offenders.
Shankar revisits his favorite theme of customized justice, and indulges his continuing fascination with the idea of 'one-hero-multiple-avatars'...at one point even giving us a Beauty and the Beast-style dream sequence to drive home the message about beauty being only skin deep. But the last hour of the film is tediously repetitive. The characterization of a transgender stylist is distinctly homophobic, and a key twist can be guessed from a mile away. The film keeps on going even when there's no surprise or revelation left, until you're truly and completely exhausted.
That's a shame because there's so much to admire in I, particularly Vikram's riveting central performance. He brings nuance through accent and body language, and succeeds in making you care for Lingesan even when he's buried under layers of prosthetics. Veteran cinematographer PC Sreeram puts up quite the show too, filming terrific action scenes like that gravity-defying bike chase on the rooftops of a housing colony in China, and those wondrous eye-popping musical numbers set to AR Rahman's winning tunes.
There's a lesson in I for makers of masala movies everywhere: Big-budget commercial films don't have to be lazy, mindless enterprises; you can bring big ideas and apply craft. I may be far from perfect, but for the most part it's pretty entertaining stuff. I'm going with three out of five.

 

Varun and Shraddha shoot an interesting dream sequence in 'ABCD 2'

Mumbai: New kids on the block Shraddha Kapoor and Varun Dhawan, who have been on a success spree with their previous releases - 'Haider' and 'Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania' doing well at the box office, don't seem to be taking a break. The duo recently wrapped up shooting for 'ABCD 2' in Las Vegas.
Both Varun and Shraddha have been actively posting behind the scenes pictures and keeping fans up to date with the making of the film. They shot an interesting dream sequence using kites. Director Remo D'Souza was very happy the shot turned out to be. He said, "Kite flying is one of my favourite festivals and since I am from Jamnagar in Gujarat where its celebrated extensively with family and friends, it really inspired me when we were shooting a song for ABCD 2. During our vegas shoot we shot a dream sequence using kites and it has turned out beautifully. Infact post the shoot the cast and crew engaged in a game of kite flying as well which was great fun...took me back to my Jamnagar days!"

 

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