Neha Lobana: IIFA Awards

On Saturday, June the 25th I attended the IIFA (International Indian Film Academy) award show, which is basically the Oscars of Bollywood. The award show was being held at the Rogers Centre.

We arrived downtown at around 4:30pm, and made our way down to the IIFA Green carpet event. The place was absolutely packed, there were people everywhere trying to get close to the gates so they could spot their favourite Bollywood actors and actresses make their way down the carpet. The area in which my family was at, was where the celebrities cars pulled up. Right when we got near the gate, after 10 minutes a celebrities car pulled up, it was Shahrukh Khan (If you haven't heard of who he is, well.. let's just say that they call him King Khan because he is the biggest star in Bollywood), he had rolled down his window and waved at all of the fans. I caught a glimpse of his face, but unfortunately I couldn't get his arrival filmed on my camera seeing how everything happened so quickly. After we had seen SRK, we waited for 20 minutes, and then came to a conclusion that it would be impossible to spot any celebrities from where we were standing, so we decided to make our way to the gate at which we would be entering in to find our seats. On our tickets, it said that they would be opening all gates at 5:30 to allow us in, instead they ended up opening them at around 6. The most bizarre part would have to be how they wouldn't let you take in a water bottle, since you had to buy it from the Rogers Centre itself but nonetheless, after 10 minutes of walking all over the second floor, we had found our seats.

Prior to the event, we were all informed that the show would be starting at 7pm. They lied, the show began at 9pm. The 2 hour wait was absolutely ridiculous, it took people forever to get inside and find their seats, and also the celebrities took their sweet time in arriving and sitting down. In fact, the announcer kept on telling the front floor (which was filled with celebrities and VIP members) to sit down, because the show couldn't start without them seated since everything was being televised live. I personally found it a shame how the celebrities didn't listen to the announcer. They kept on socializing with each other near the stage, and made over 25,000 fans wait for them to take a seat in the stadium. Finally, the show began by introducing the two hosts of the night which were Ritesh Deshmukh and Boman Irani. Followed by introducing the premier of Canada, Dalton Mcguinty. On behalf of Canada, Dalton Mcguinty had put together a performance which showed all international stars and guests what Canada is all about through a dance performance. The event carried on with numerous awards given out, and there were definitely a few twists. The first would have to be when Boman, Ritesh and SRK were on stage, a man from the audience ran up on the stage and grabbed on to Shahrukh's legs. Shahrukh Khan being the kind, respectable man he is, kept cool and told the man that he would meet him back stage, he even added that he promised to meet him back stage to convince the man to get off the stage and continue the show. The second twist of the night was seeing Hollywood celebrities such as Hilary Swank, Cuba Gooding Jr, and australian cricketer Brett Lee at the IIFA awards.

My favourite part of any award show is always the celebrity performances! The first performance of the night was made by Kangana Ranaut, and to be quite honest I didn't really enjoy her performance. It looked as if she was struggling to even keep herself up while dancing due to fatigue. The second performance of the night was made by the one and only Deol family, Bobby and Sunny Deol, accompanied by their father Dharmendra. I enjoyed watching their performance, it started off with Bobby and slowly all three of the family members came in and danced together. The best part of the their performance was how they showed their Punjabi side by incorporating a dhol into their performance. After finishing their performance, a special honour was given to Dharmendra by SRK, followed by a standing ovation to the great veteran actor. The next few performances were made by the gorgeous Bipasha Basu, Ranveeer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha, Priyanka Chopra and the finishing act was by no other but the great king khan! After 7 years, Shahrukh Khan returned on stage to give his audience the performance of a lifetime. Despite his knee injury, Khan finished the night off by dancing with the entire audience and teaching them some dance moves. Huge Kudo's go out to Shahrukh seeing how his knees started bleeding right after the finishing performance. He truly lived up to his expectations and wowed the entire crowd!

All in all, even though the award show started awfully late and the chairs were uncomfortable, the celebrities, performances, and awards given out definitely made up for it. It was definitely an experience that I will never forget. Hopefully in the future, I will be attending more of these award shows as a member of press, so I can get up close and personal with the fabulous celebs!