The city — sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Mumbai’s chairman of selectors Milind Rege with England’s batting coach Mark Ramprakash at the Cricket Club of India on Thursday. Pic/Rajesh Shah
Rege rage at the Cooch Behar
We bumped into an angry man the other day at the Cooch Behar Room of the Cricket Club of India — Milind Rege, former Mumbai Ranji Trophy captain and now chairman of the city’s senior selection committee.
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Rege was happy to meet a few members of the England cricket team and former Australia coach John Buchanan, who graced a party thrown by cricket lover Sachin Bajaj, but he was fuming over the fact that his Mumbai Ranji Trophy team had to endure a long journey to Mysore for their ongoing Ranji fixture.
According to Rege, the team were scheduled to leave Mumbai by a 10 am flight on Thursday which got delayed to 1.30 pm. On landing in Bangalore, the Chandrakant Pandit-coached outfit spent another hour-and-a-half getting their kit offloaded before taking a six-hour road journey to Mysore.
Pointing to the Indian cricket board’s decision to have Ranji Trophy games at neutral venues this season, Rege said, “It is ridiculous that a team, the defending champions of the Ranji Trophy, be made to endure such inconvenience. This neutral venue system just doesn’t make sense.”
Rege’s straight drive for the evening was yet to come. He was keen to apply for the post of a junior national selector, but the BCCI came up with a below-60 age criteria. After slamming the restriction, the 67-year-old Rege, turned to a BCCI official sitting near him and asked, “Do I look demented?”
Rege has played well at the CCI where he figured in quite a few Ranji Trophy and club games, but this was a shot to remember.
Naked truth
Does an actor need clothes?” asks Neil Bhoopalam, of NH10 fame. For Neil, who is seen shedding clothes for a dance sequence in Druv Kent’s music video, What It’s All About, which released this week, the question is rather, rhetorical.
“For the longest time, I’ve been wanting to go naked on a stage production,” says the 33-year-old actor. That hasn’t happened yet, but stripping for Kent’s video, he says has been a good start. “I think it’s the ultimate pushing of yourself as a performer,” says Neil.
Ask him why, and pat comes his reply, “When you’re acting without clothes on, you are being judged not for what you wear, but for what you are. You’re literally, exposing your naked truth.” A true performer, he says, would have no inhibitions revealing his true self.
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Pic/Satej Shinde
(From left) Rima Jain, Karan Johar, Amitabh, Jaya and Abhishek Bachchan capture Shweta Bachchan Nanda on their cell phone as she walked as showstopper for an Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla show on Friday.
Kitchen Confidential
If loud whispers in the city’s swish kitchen circles are anything to go by, Hemant Oberoi, former executive chef at the Taj Group of Hotels, is well on his way to completing work on his own restaurant. While Oberoi has not uttered a peep on it yet, this one, we hear, will be a signature venture called Hemant, which will serve its patrons his rendition of Indian cuisine.
Hemant Oberoi
At the moment, the chef is busy drafting the menu and he has sounded off a few close friends on the same. Even as the details are being kept under wraps, this diarist learns that BKC could well be the place hungry Mumbaikars would soon be heading to, to satiate both their appetites and their curiosity. After all, it’s the best in the business we’re talking here. We’ll keep our ears perked up on this one.
From Rahul to Raj
After helming Living With A Superstar, a TV series on Shah Rukh Khan, director Samar Khan felt there was one aspect he hadn’t touched upon – the filmmakers who made him the superstar that he is. “Today, SRK is the culmination of all the Rahul, Raj and Kabirs he has played till date,” says Khan.
On November 9, the former journalist will launch his coffee table book titled, SRK: 25 Years of a Life, wherein filmmakers talk about their experiences of working with Shah Rukh in the last 20 years, right from Aziz Mirza to Rohit Shetty. “The only big filmmaker he’s yet to work with is Raju Hirani. I think he’s pretty much covered the rest,” he smiles.
Then meets now
Even as she helms affairs at her gallery in Mumbai, Arshiya Lokhandwala is busy curating the collection at Gyan Museum in Jaipur.
Arshiya Lokhandwala
From November 14, the museum, which people could earlier visit by appointment, will be open to the public, allowing visitors a chance to see the historical collection of fabrics, jewellery and silverware, dating to the 16th century.
The museum will open with the exhibition, Talking Between Objects. “It’s a great move as the museum becomes a public platform, as well as for Jaipur, which hasn’t explored the contemporary art space enough,” says Lokhandwala.
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