Roving Eye

Youthful nightsFor the media world, the event of the week was the re-launch of Channel V. And to bring in its new look, the channel hel...

Youthful nights

For the media world, the event of the week was the re-launch of Channel V. And to bring in its new look, the channel held a party at the President Hotel. Now, Channel V plans to project itself as a youth driven channel and has brought in a whole new list of programmes with younger veejays. And one of these will be the dusky ramp model Nina Manuel, who will be the compere for many new shows. In fact, Laila Rouass is the only female veejay who has been retained. She and Marc Robinson — he stays on as their on-ground veejay — were both very much visible at the bash. The party was mainly aimed at the advertising and media crowd as well some of V’s clients. The head of the channel, Steve Smith, flew done from Hong-Kong just for the event. He was seen hob-nobbing with Elle’s Nirja Shah and Thomas Cook’s Ash Kakkar.

This was followed by another V bash — hosted by executive producer Puneet Sira at the channel V house in Khar for its production staff. Looks like here’s one teamthat knows how to mix work with pleasure.

Double bash

Another double-bash man this week was Kishen Mulchandani. Palkhi’s owner had two parties to celebrate his birthday. One was a quiet sit-down affair at his restaurant on Wednesday — the night before his birthday. This intimate and elegant affair was attended by Kishen’s close friends — Aarti and Kailash Surendranath, Sanjeev Chowdhury, Sonia Garware, Rita Dhody, Suketu Shah, Krishna Mehta, Vinod Nair and his two sons Nikki and Arun. What made this bash unique, though, was the fact that for once, most of the guests came on time and dinner was actually served before midnight!

The following night, however, it was a different story. Kishen hosted his next do at Scream for 300 friends, but over 600 people turned up. Looks like people just love to gate-crash — nearly every invitee came with at least one extra person. So much so, that many of the invitees preferred leaving early to getting crushed. But Kishen tried his best to accommodate everyoneand even arranged for drinks and pav-bhaji to be served outside the nightclub. Among those seen enjoying the night were Neelam Kothari and this year’s Gladrags winner John Abraham — the former was squashed in a corner with close friends Ekta Kapoor and costume designer Sabina Khan.

Closed doors

The doors of AD Singh’s An Off-Beat Cafe may not be open to the public yet, but everyone is already talking about the place. On Wednesday night, Bacardi held a promotion there and the place was packed to the hilt. Copa Cabana’s deejay Rohan was in charge of mixing sound — besides which there was also some live jazz music. And the soulful tunes attracted a variety of party animals. Spotted enjoying themselves in the middle of the week was Marc Robinson with buddy Sumeet Chopra, dancer Dodo Bhujwala, Channel V’s Mel De Souza and Ranadip De. The son of Dilip De, this young ad-man can be spotted quite frequently at all the city’s night-clubs.

And finally…

Last week some media personalities likeBehram Contractor and Dolly Thakore were given a sneak preview of Such a Long Journey — a film about a Parsi family set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh war. It stars Roshan Seth and Soni Razdan — the latter was present for the preview. This special screening was fuelled by the Censor Board’s decision to order 16 cuts to the film. Everyone present seemed moved by the film and Dolly, who was also the casting director, commented on how these cuts will mar the film. "It’s a shame — especially because both Roshan and Soni have given outstanding performances." For now, people involved with the film are trying to see how they can get the Censor Board to change their mind. Let’s wish them best of luck as it really is a very moving film that deserves to be seen as it was made.