Aamir all set for a new face

The chameleon of Bollywood, Amir Khan, who changes his looks in almost every film, is all set for a new role. This time, it is to protect foreign tourists and monuments, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 11, 2009, 01:10:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The chameleon of Bollywood, Amir Khan, who changes his looks in almost every film, is all set for a new role. This time, it is to protect foreign tourists and monuments.

After the success of his latest flick, Ghajini, Khan will appear on the small screen and cinema halls with the message — treat foreign tourists as guests and don’t spoil monuments with graffiti.

The campaign will be launched after mid-January. While Ghajini is doing well in India, his home production, Tare Zameen Par, in which he also features, will be considered for the Oscar Awards 2009 in February.

The actor, who was signed by the Tourism Ministry as brand ambassador in August 2008, has shot two short films and several photo-messages for the print and the Internet for the ministry’s Atithi Devo Bhava campaign.

“The idea is to make tourists feel that their holidays will be comfortable,” a ministry official, who did not wish to be quoted, said.

In the first film, Khan is seen as recalling the Indian tradition of treating “the guest as an epitome of god” and asking citizens to respect foreign tourists and help them whenever required.

The film also aims at sensitising people of the consequences of ill-treating foreign tourists, following reports of molestation and rape of foreign tourists in Rajasthan and Goa.

Such incidents resulted in many countries issuing advisories to its nationals to be careful about their security in India. Khan will also assure foreign tourists that India is a safe destination for them.

The second film has asked people not to write graffiti on monuments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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