Masala! Awards Lifetime Achievement Awards

With just three days to go, the excitement is building up for the biggest night of the season, the Masala! Awards 2011. Today, we announce the recipients of one of the most coveted trophies – the Lifetime Achievement Awards. They are two stalwarts in their own right and here is their life story...

Maghanmal Pancholia
When Dubai was but a pearl diving village, Maghanmal Pancholia landed on our shores aboard a Chinese cargo ship from Karachi. Ever since, his journey has been extraordinary and one filled with tremendous adventure and success. Today, at 88, the man, who is lovingly called Maghaba, is respected and revered as one of the greatest contributors to the UAE from the Asian fraternity.

Much about his remarkable life has been revealed in his recently released autobiography Footprints – Memoirs Of An Indian Patriarch. Trials and tribulations marked his voyage, but with grit and determination, his modest business expanded and diversified beyond his own wildest dreams. As the Chairman of the M/S Maghanmal Jethanand and the Arabian Trading Agency companies, one of Dubai’s oldest business houses, today Maghanmal Pancholia, has seen, lived through and been a dynamic force of growth in Dubai’s metamorphosis from a modest trading centre to one of the world’s most magnetic metropolises.

Shabana Azmi
Shabana Azmi gives the word ‘bold’ a whole new definition altogether. She is known to make unconventional choices, in films as well as in life. At a time when the Hindi film heroine was all about being a glamourous appendage to the macho hero, Shabana dared to step into unchartered territory and create a whole new niche for herself, becoming one of the leading lights of the ‘parallel cinema’ movement. Her outstanding performance in films like Ankur, Nishant, Arth, Mandi to name just a few are still considered benchmarks for the current generation of actresses. To be ‘the Shabana Azmi of her generation’ is often a title most newbies aspire for.

Over the years, Shabana’s activism and outspokenness has won her a lot of admirers and detractors alike but she has never shied away from speaking her mind. This creative powerhouse’s contribution to cinema, theatre and social work continues to inspire millions of women the world over.