It hasn’t been too long since Udta Panjab and Anurag Kashyap successfully took on archaic censorship laws in India
It hasn’t been too long since Udta Panjab and Anurag Kashyap successfully took on archaic censorship laws in India. Now word comes in that Kashyap will conduct a master class for students and cinema lovers alike in Australia at the upcoming Indian Film Festival in Melbourne, which is kick-starting next week.
It will see Kashyap be part of it alongside the likes of Rishi Kapoor, Fawad Khan, Richa Chadha and Radhika Apte amongst others.
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Anurag Kashyap
Speaking on his upcoming session, the director said, “I can put forth my point of view and talk about how censorship is so pointless in the day and age of the Internet. I am excited as this is my first time there and really looking forward to interacting with the students.” Nice!
Pop up rivalry
This Saturday will see two pop up nightclubs, both held in the ballrooms of two neighbouring Lower Parel five-star hotels, both termed as ‘guest list only’ (is there such a thing in Mumbai?), and both vying for the same high-spending, middle-aged crowd.
Dino Morea, Aaditya Thackeray, Nandita Mahtani and Shraddha Kapoor
The first is the Playground Party, which many consider the original and is put together by Dino Morea, Vishal Shetty and Nandita Mahtani every couple of weeks and has seen guests like Aaditya Thackeray, Virat Kohli and Karan Johar attend.
The second is the Float Party, which started soon after and is put together by Anissa Dhody and Ritik Bhasin and has had guests like Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Dhawan and Lisa Haydon in attendance. And with hotel source informing that their billing has touched Rs 60 lakh for one night’s worth of pop up, we can see what the excitement is all about. It’s big money and the party usually peaks between 2 am and 5 am. So which party will pop louder this weekend? Watch this space!
Separated at birth?
Vijay Mallya’s cup of humiliations brims over. Not only did one of modern India’s most flamboyant hosts have to face the ignominy of being accused of gate-crashing a book launch in London, but also now his detractors are comparing him to the beleaguered, equally flamboyant British biz man, Sir Philip Green who has been recently facing flak for the collapse of British Home Stores.
Vijay Mallya and Sir Philip Green. Pic/AFP
The irony is that all this, while Mallya was being compared to another flamboyant British entrepreneur, the swashbuckling Richard Branson. “It was a spurious comparison,” says a business insider. “After all Mallya’s flamboyances came through his spending, whereas Branson’s flamboyance was in the dare devil activities and philanthropy.”
Green, on the other hand appears to be cut from the same Merino fabric as VJM. The chairman of Arcadia Group, a retail company that includes Topshop, and Wallis and Miss Selfridge, has been singled out for his conspicuous consumption. For
his 50th birthday, he is said to have flown 200 guests in a chartered Airbus A300 to a hotel in Cyprus for a three-day toga party, where Tom Jones and Rod Stewart performed. And his toys include a £100 million yacht and a £20 million Gulfstream private jet along with a personalized Monopoly Set in pure gold, which his wife gifted him.
Mirror images? Separated at the Kumbh Mela? Or just two sides of the same coin?
More on Modi
Since the item about KK Modi’s autobiography/ memoirs appeared, two bits of news regarding him came in. The first: that his long winding battle with his son, IPL founder Lalit Modi, has been amicably resolved.
Lalit Modi
“The issue was the latter’s insistence on selling off one of the family jewels, a successful cigarette brand,” says an insider, “but that’s resolved. But the more joyous one is that later this month the senior Modi’s birthday - a grand destination affair that sees some of Delhi’s leading denizens fly off for a weekend mostly abroad –will be celebrated in Taipei.
Organised by his glamorous wife Binna and following on the heels of their alleged rapprochement, there is every chance that it will see Lalit jetting in for the festivities. “That will be the cherry on the cake for sure,” says the insider.
Old friends and new beginnings
‘Hello Life!! Happy Birthday Sujata Assomull!! Have a super fabulous year!!’ was design maven and attractive woman around town, Divya Thakur’s cheery post accompanying this picture. “The photo is from a lovely dinner we had at my place recently, as a sort of homecoming for her,” says Thakur about the peripatetic fashion writer who travels between India and Dubai.
Divya Thakur and Sujata Assomull
“We first met when she did the first ever print interview of my studio in 1999. So it was a celebration of old times and a welcome to new beginnings!” As for Thakur, she is currently working on a capsule exhibit for a large hotel group, on Timeless Weddings. It will show this weekend at a Wedding Show in Delhi. I’m enroute to the airport as I write this!” she said.
More days in paradise
More on the Nero fiddling away syndrome of some members of India Inc. These two brothers who together owe constitutional creditors around Rs 80,000 crores (gulp), and who feature prominently in the infamous ‘House of Debt’ list have recently acquired a sumptuous property in London.
Not only that, but the son-in-law of one who is in debt to the relatively lesser tune of under Rs 10,000 crores himself, is organising the nuptials of his progeny in a swish European city soon. Perhaps the term ‘laughing all the way to the bank’ might need to be amended to ‘laughing all the way at the bank,’ for isn’t that what it is now?
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