"If I had a slight inkling, I'd have probably dressed better!" said our former colleague, Jitesh Pillai, the editor of one of the country's oldest film journals, about what he described as the 'mad crazy night!' when his friends threw a surprise party to bring in his 40th birthday.

That Pillai, who bears more than a passing resemblance to AR Rahman, and is a particularly likeable teddy bear of a man has many friends is known but that the entire galaxy of stars from Bollywood's Milky Way would descend, was unprecedented.