Pune finds it’s man at last

The evening began fashionably late at 9 pm rather than the appointed time of 7.30 pm but once it took off the entire show sailed through smoothly right from the first item that had the nine celebrity judges walking down the ramp before they gave way to the Mr Pune contestants.

A little nervous, a trifle unsure, a wad too pompous or then almost insecure, the 21 males then took centrestage and introduced themselves to the audience and judges with well-rehearsed lines delivered either with complete confidence or then utter awkwardness.

As they retreated to the wings to await the result of the first round, the stage was taken over by the models from Mumbai and Pune who proceeded to give the crowds some scintillating fashion sequences. Then, the band – Silk route belted out two of their popular numbers including Dooba Dooba. The scene stealers were undoubtedly Jas Arora with his impish charm and tall and stately Madhu Sapre as they catwalked down the ramp. Other well-known names included Tejaswini Kolhapure, Rajat Bedi, Aditi Govitrikar, Tora Khasgir and Gauri Pradhan.

Remix wizard from Mumbai Sanjay Raina accompanied by a nascent local dance group, Living Colours, also performed to some of the popular remix numbers such as Roop tera mastana and Ae meri Zohra Jabeen. The maximum applause was bagged by the little children from Career Forum who did the catwalk with much aplomb and heart warming confidence.

And interspersing all these was the second round of the Mr Pune contest with the 21 contestants shortlisting to nine to enable each of the nine judges to put a question to one of the participants. This was followed by a further shortlisting of the contestants to five to finally arrive at the much-awaited magical number of three.

By this time Prashant Dua’s win surprised few as the calm and down to earth manager with TASMAC had been a hot favourite from round one. Vivek Rachh and Rakesh Bapat were adjudged the first and second runners up respectively. Sashes were also presented to Anand Khadolkar who had been adjudged Mr Talent at a talent round held some days back even as Tushar Raman and Sunil Mirchandani shared the title of Mr Physique.

The panel of judges for the show comprised Vivek Mushran, Naved Jafferey, Ravi Behl, Rocky S and Meher Castellino from Mumbai while Vinod Kambli, Farida Master, Dilip Puri and Ratna Khemani made up the Pune side.

Despite the fact that the show turned out to be a surprisingly well organised one, what was obviously disappointing was the rather sparse audience at the sprawling venue, a far cry from the 4,000-odd number expected by the organisers. Nevertheless little touches like female escorts for the five final male contestants and compere Rakshanda’s exuberance on stage did go a long way in keeping the audience in good humour till the show wound up just short of midnight.

The curtains came down with the victorious threesome of the Mr Pune Personality contest taking a final walk down the ramp arm-in-arm flashing pearly smiles all around and probably saying a silent prayer to the Almighty for their good fortune. Ah-men!