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Journalism of Courage
Gandhian White
Whenever the mercury hits the roof, the city’s party animals hit the holiday trail. So when Rohit H20 Gandhi decided to let his hair down at Mirage, which has our vote for being the most happening disc in town, rustling up a guest list looked like being quite a challenge. But Gandhi, the lord of all party animals, isn’t one to balk at a challenge. He did have 200-plus guests showing up on Monday, dressed in white — the theme colour for the evening even as power cuts proved to be the great leveller.
We spotted Ravi Bajaj wearing a white printed shirt with white trousers; ditto for Malini Ramani and Ruchi Malhotra, who boogeyed as if there were no tomorrow (Gandhi’s do, in fact, is said to be the season’s last). Others like Suneet Verma, who’d even picked up four white shirts from Gandhi’s Golf Links studio the other day, however, settled for a lime-green shirt and black trousers. Tut, tut!
Both Mehar Bhasin and Harmeet Bajaj were labouring under the impression that black still rules, as was Robert Vadra, all the more conspicuous by the absence of his much-better half. Others who stayed away were Gandhi’s pal, Rohit Bal, who was down with viral fever, Ashish Soni and Rina Dhaka. The party augured well for Mirage’s Luv Malhotra, who hasn’t had so many people shaking a leg on a Monday night ever since the disc threw its doors open.
Laugh Riot
If the heat (or DVB, one doesn’t know which is worse) has been driving you mad, you should have been at Max Mueller Bhawan for the laugh-a-minute act with a mouthful for a title — The-Four-Wheel-Drive Come to Me Mr Sharma’ Body-Fat-Murdered-Show. And if the name sounds unusual, well, the skits were unusually funny, which had the likes of Sonal Mansingh, Naresh and Madhu Trehan, Sheba Chachi, Anamika Haksar and Rajiv Sethi.
The baby of Maya Krishna Rao and Shumita Didi-Sandhu isn’t your usual musical comedy. It’s a spoof on contemporary times, reacting to issues as current as the nuke tests or Indians shopping mindlessly at malls abroad. Rao changed into at last 30 different costumes in this sequence alone, which lasted for not more than 10 minutes! That qualifies her for the Limca Book of Records, doesn’t it?
Interactive and racy, the Come to Me Mr Sharma’ bit had Rao picking up men from the audience she would point to a man, say he was good-looking, and clutch at a tablecloth with orgasmic glee. Incidentally, while Rao has acquired quite a formidable reputation with her stage performances, Sandhu’s better-known for her directorial venture featuring Khushwant Singh for the India View series in those pre-cable days when Doordarshan ruled the airwaves and you were spared the torment of mindlessly clicking at the remote without expecting to see something new.
Fida On Husain
Maqbool Fida Husain’s Sita latching on to Hanuman’s tail may have sent the loony fringe into a trishul-waving frenzy, but the barefoot master’s Maya 1 is making gentle waves across the art mart. Still, Maya 1’s reserved price ($25-33,000) at Christie’s Twentieth Century Indian Art auction, to be held in London on Tuesday, is a fraction of what a Chinese or Japanese work would command. Lower still in the pecking order is Husain’s Horse, which is pegged at $14-20,000. The works of the other 64 artists whose works go under the hammer, including the calendar-type paintings of the 19th-century Bombay master Mahadev Visvanath Dhurandhar (the first Indian headmaster of Sir J. J. School of Art), are well within the outer limit of $20,000.
Delhi’s Anjolie Ela Menon is a rare exception, with the reserved price of her Family being $20-25,000. Paris-based Syed Haider Raza’s La’arbre ou Germination comes for a low $4,200-5,800, though auctioning for his Genese will start on better note, at $14,000-20,000. The paintings of Calcutta’s Ganesh Pyne are in the $15-20,000 bracket, but the Paris-based Sakti Burman doesn’t cross $10,000 mark, with some of his ink and watercolors marked at a low $1,700-2,500. Even the works of the old Bengal School masters, say, Jamini Roy, don’t go beyond $10,000. Christie’s, clearly, has a long way to go before it can raise the worth of Indian art in the eyes of international buyers. And it’ll be interesting to see who the artists are who make bidders, as in previous occasions, shy away even from the reserve prices.
Real Darlings
It came as quite a surprise the other day, but Bollywood’s darlings actually look pretty much the same in real life, despite not wearing much make-up, and not dressing down, as they generally do in those steamy jhatka numbers. Some of them, like Pooja Batra, or Arbaaz Khan, even manage to look better off screen. Arbaaz smiles sweetly, and Pooja, her slight accent notwithstanding, has a point to make about the position of women in the Mumbai masala machine.
All this, and much more, was evident at a recent do to announce the launch of Ashok Ghai’s latest film, Sham Ghansham, whose posters remind you of Karan Arjun. Sample this gem from Pooja: “I have a glamour role. But you know that women hardly have any position in the film industry.” And hearing the gasps from the phillum journos, she added quickly: “Unless, of course, you reach the level of someone like Kajol!” Are you listening, Kajol? Priya Gill, who plays the second female lead in the film, preferred to reserve her opinion on the issue.
But it was quite obvious that the day belonged to Chandrachur Maachis Singh, who was besieged by hacks and fans alike as soon as the briefing was over. One enthusiastic, and somewhat well-rounded, matron drooled all over the debonair Singh. “You know, my son is your biggest fan,” she cooed, and promptly handed him a ten-rupee note to autograph. What beat everyone, though, was that he just wouldn’t take off his aviator glasses. Maybe those dreamy eyes had a story to hide.
