On the day Prince Charles was to visit the sets of Aamir Khan’s The Rising, he had an impromptu surprise in store: bumping into a Princess Diana lookalike during a reception in Mumbai. He looked clearly surprised. But it was a different Prince on the film sets: “Rising, mahurat shot. Take one clap,” a smiling Charles, dressed in a blue suit, announced even as director Ketan Mehta looked on. After the clap, Aamir and Toby Stevens, the British actor who plays the Khan’s friend in the film, enacted a scene. Sad that Aishwarya Rai and Rani Mukherjee were not there on the sets.
Now we know that Mandira Bedi can do more than just talk about cricket. She can actually hold the bat. Her extraa innings had even the mighty Australians on the edge this week at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru stadium: they appealed...in vain to get her off the crease. We’re impressed, Mandira.
This one’s for all those cribbing about the death of creativity. Some bright minds in Bollywood are busy with a ‘thriller’ on the case of Shivani Bhatnagar, the Indian Express journalist whose murder had set off a politically loaded uproar in Delhi last year. Jackie Shroff plays the adulterous top cop in director Osho Raja’s Devyani, with the 2002 Miss India-World Shruti Sharma as a TV journo. A sleaze feast? Raja won’t say so: “We’ll make it with the aesthetics of international cinema. I’ll stay true to the subject—adultery, a contemporary theme.” And guess what, Raja’s already thought about a grand finale.
Designer label Satya Paul has scored more brownie points. After impressing fashion buffs with their Raja Ravi Varma collection of sarees, it was destination Dubai recently. The Arabs, with a fair sprinkling of expatriates among the audience, were left gaping at Sheetal Malhar and Inc donning SP’s richly-embellished bridal lehengas with contemporary styling. Read fitted waistlines and accentuated midriffs.
It was as if the entire Bollywood had turned up for this do—at the opening of Twinkle Khanna’s lifestyle store, White Window in Mumbai recently. Resplendent with colour, it stocks candles, cushions, crockery, silverware... whatever the fashionably inclined among you may wish to possess. Like the people who came for the opening: Akshay Kumar (but, of course), Kareena Kapoor, Amar Singh, Tabu, Dimple, Suzanne Khan, Lara Dutta....
