IIFA Awards 2011! Bollywood star power sparkles up Toronto

Bipasha Busu

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Bipasha BusuYes folks, Toronto played host to four days of jam-packed events and programming starring several Bollywood Stars. Even though there had been many buzz events beforehand with one or two stars associated with Bollywood in attendance, it wasn’t until Thursday Jun 23 that the GTA got a glimpse of the stars as several showed up for the premiere of ‘Double Dhamaal’in Brampton . Anil Kapoor, Kangana Ranaut, Mallika Sherawat, Lisa Ray, Javed Jaffrey, Irrfan Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Boman Irani and many more showed up for the event.

The next day, on Friday morning, there was pandemonium at the Royal York Hotel as Shahrukh ‘King’ Khan, checked in. His fans went totally nuts, but the ‘badshah’ remained cool, calm and collected as he wished them all. The day continued with lots of events and media conferences. At the Metro Convention Centre, IIFA’s global forum on business was held, moderated by IIFA’s Sabbas Joseph and where popular Member of Parliament of India, Mr. Shashi Tharoor, was also present along with several other business leaders including Benjamin Tal of CIBC. At 1 pm, many stars showed up for the movie premiere of ‘Chillar Party’. After that there was a function at the Rose Theatre in Brampton to name a street ‘Raj Kapoor Crescent’ in honour of Hindi cinema’s great actor- Raj Kapoor! Then a media conference in Toronto to honour Shahrukh Khan where Mayor Rob Ford presented him with a special scroll and a Toronto flag on behalf of the City of Toronto.Events continued at several different venues, including a buzz event in Mississauga. The day culminated with a fabulous ‘IIFA Rocks’ show at the Ricoh Coliseum, where several local singers and Bollywood stars performed.

Saturday morning saw a music workshop conducted by Bollywood’s tremendous trio, Shankar- Ehsaan – Loy followed by more conferences. And then the grand evening everyone was waiting for- the IIFA awards night at the Rogers Centre. Torontonians lined up 20 deep (and more) to get their eyes’ worth of Bollywood stars as they walked down the Green Carpet, greeting and shaking hands with their screaming fans. One could feel the magic in the air! Surprise appearances by Hollywood stars, Cuba Gooding Jr and Hilary Swank, pumped up the crowd even more. This was as good as it gets for the public at large!

And then the final course- the actual award ceremony, hosted by king Khan, Riteish Deshmukh and the inimitable Boman Irani. The show started an hour late, around 9 pm, in typical Indian Standard Time fashion and continued for a solid 5 hours, ending at about 2.15 am!What a night for many! Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Asha Bhosle, Zeenat Aman, Sharmila Tagore, Shabana Azmi, Dharmendra, Sunny, Bobby, Arshad’Circuit’ Warsi, Anupam Kher, Vivek Oberoi, Kangana Ranaut, Priyanka Chopra, Mallika Sherawat, Neha Dhupia, Zayed Khan and several more flared up the Rogers Centre!

On Sunday, Toronto was treated to a fabulous dessert as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) honoured the ‘khandani’ Kapoor family by holding a panel discussion hosted by Anupam Kher where many of the Kapoor family attended, with Krishna Kapoor, Raj Kapoor’s wife, at the centre of it all. To honour Hindi cinema’s greatest showman, Raj Kapoor, the TIFF lightbox will run a retrospective of his movies through till August 7.
 
That brought an end to the fantabulous IIFA weekend here in the mighty Toronto!

Cick HERE to view pictures from IIFA 2011 in Toronto

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