Aqua flows into Delhi

NEW DELHI, November 17: Barbie is crazy about barbecue. But it is Chef Mani’s walnut apple tart that has her begging for more. “Can I have some, please?” is how Lene, the Aqua girl, is said to have implored the waiter not once, but all of three times last night! “The girl’s just amazing,” gushes F&B Manager Kuldeep Bhartee of Taj Palace, where the chartbusting group checked in yesterday for the Channel [V] Music Awards on November 21.

It’s not just her eating habits that has Bhartee all starry-eyed. The baby-voiced singer gave him quite a complex when she spoke to him eyeball-to-eyeball, quite an experience for a six-foot model who has walked the ramps of Paris for the likes of Giorgio Armani and Hugo Boss. “You have a good place here, but you must come to Norway,” she cooed to Bhartee in the course of their tandoori meal by the poolside last night.

Though Aqua’s stay at Taj Palace has been a closely-guarded affair, and no amount of coaxing on our part made the Travel Desk divulge a thing about the hotel’s star attraction, Bhartee was more than eager to share his secret. “She put her hand around my waist like this and… what do I say?” He’s visibly at a loss of words. “I kept talking to her for a long time without realising what a nut I’d been. Finally, I made my man run for a camera and got a picture with her,” he remembers.

Bhartee, however, is not sure whether he can allow us to print it. Not that it’s a polaroid picture and it won’t show well on paper, but he fears the dude who tails `Dr Jones’ Rene like a shadow. “You must see the guy to believe it, oooff! He’s so big!” exclaims Bhartee. Who would like to be made mincemeat of in his own kitchen?