<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/jan/malavika.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="85" />"I wasn't in the dining table scene because I refused to laugh at my daughter," says Soni Razdan about 'Genius of the Year', the Youtube clip, featuring her daughter, actress Alia Bhatt that&rsquo;s gone viral.
Variously called &lsquo;the most brilliant way a star has countered a negative image&rsquo; to &lsquo;such a welcome change that a celeb can laugh at herself&rsquo; the short film features the lovely actress responding to her supposed &lsquo;dumb blonde&rsquo; image by sending it up in style.
The 21-year-old had been the butt of cyber jokes when she&rsquo;d mistakenly cited the Maharashtra CM Chavan as being the President of India on an episode of Koffee with Karan. Not that it means anything, but we&rsquo;d never bought into the stories of her supposed lack of IQ, after all how could the daughter of Mahesh Bhatt and Soni Razdan be anything but bright?
<img title="Alia Bhatt" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/27-Alia-Bhatt.jpg" alt="Alia Bhatt" /><img title="Soni Razdan" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/27-Soni-Razdan.jpg" alt="Soni Razdan" /><img title="Parineeti Chopra" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/Parineeti-Chopra.jpg" alt="Parineeti Chopra" /> Alia Bhatt,&nbsp;Soni Razdan and&nbsp;Parineeti Chopra
&ldquo;She&rsquo;s no Nietzsche but she&rsquo;s certainly not dumb,&rdquo; says Razdan. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s done her IB, she&rsquo;s as intelligent as the next girl, so I used to feel so sad when all those jokes began to circulate,&rdquo; said the protective mom. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so good to see her respond to it with such style. And hats off to the film&rsquo;s producers and Karan Johar, Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra (in pic) for playing along and sending themselves up too. It&rsquo;s so great to have humour done intelligently!&rdquo; she said. As for the scene, which she conveniently skipped, it featured husband Mahesh chuckling over the joke &lsquo;What does Alia Bhatt think is India&rsquo;s national animal. Ans: Tiger Shroff.&rsquo;
&ldquo;Fortunately I had a yoga class, but even if I was at the table I would have not smiled,&rdquo; said Razdan.
Mumbai boy makes good In India, Sarosh Zaiwalla is best known for defending the family of actor Amitabh Bachchan against charges of involvement in the Bofors scandal, a case that he had won.
<img title="Sarosh Zaiwalla" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/Sarosh-Zaiwalla.jpg" alt="Sarosh Zaiwalla" width="200" /><img title="Amitabh Bachchan" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/Amitabh-Bachchan.jpg" alt="Amitabh Bachchan" /><img title="Tony Blair" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/Tony-Blair.jpg" alt="Tony Blair" /> Sarosh Zaiwalla, Amitabh Bachchan and Tony Blair
The Bachchans are among the high-profile people that Zaiwalla knows personally and mingles with socially. He was a friend of Margaret Thatcher, when she was alive. He&rsquo;s friends with John Major and Tony Blair (who once worked for Zaiwalla as a young lawyer, and whom he allegedly had to sack). He knew Rajiv Gandhi and P V Narasimha Rao. He&rsquo;s friends with Chandraswami. And with the Dalai Lama. He knew Benazir Bhutto well. The list is a veritable Who&rsquo;s Who of Global Rich and Powerful.
Try reaching the Mumbai-born St Xavier&rsquo;s school alumnus and you are hardly ever likely to find him in London, where he started the first full-fledged non-white law firm in the City of London, that bastion of British establishment. That&rsquo;s because his practice, since he set sail from Mumbai in 1972, is so successful that Zaiwalla can no longer be considered just a London lawyer.
His clients at Zaiwalla &amp; Co &ndash; which he founded in 1982, and which now has 18 lawyers - include governments, companies and individuals in Russia, China, Iran, Mongolia, European Union and, of course, India.
Which means he&rsquo;s usually jetting from capital to capital. And when he&rsquo;s not in planes, he can be found at his lovely apartment overlooking the Mediterranean in the French village of Villefranche-sur-Mer, a 30-minute drive from Nice. Or at his seaside house, aptly called Neptune, in Sussex, not far from London.
Unsurprisingly, Zaiwala&rsquo;s London home, a luxurious apartment on the Thames, overlooking the Houses of Parliament, looks virtually out of a Hollywood movie with an almost mandatory Bentley parked in the basement.
But the occasional worry lines do fray the jet set lawyer&rsquo;s brow.
Word comes in that currently what&rsquo;s concerning the lawyer, whose name is reported to have once again come up for nomination to the House of Lords, is this onerous task: Which luxury car to buy for France?
Credit where it&rsquo;s due In the self-serving atmosphere that&rsquo;s known as Mumbai society, it&rsquo;s so rare to have an icon expressing gratitude and admiration for another.
<img title="Hemant Trevedi" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/Hemant-Trevedi.jpg" alt="Hemant Trevedi" /> Hemant Trevedi
Which is why, when designer Neeta Lulla, a star in her own right, was overheard crediting designer Hemant Trevedi for his role in her success, our ears pricked up. &ldquo;He was my professor at the SNDT when I studied fashion,&rdquo; she said, when we ran into her over the weekend. &ldquo;And I will always be grateful for the knowledge he imparted.&rdquo; Nice!
Alt fest turns respectable? It&rsquo;s known as the ultimate alternative trippy getaway for dyed-in-the-wool hipsters.
Held annually in the Nevada desert, the Burning Man festival has won itself a unique notoriety, known to give the hundreds of thousands who attend it instant street-cred.
<img title="Jacqueline Lundquist and Richard Frank Celeste" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/Jacqueline-Richard-Celeste.jpg" alt="Jacqueline Lundquist and Richard Frank Celeste" /> Jacqueline Lundquist and Richard Frank Celeste
Tickets to this year&rsquo;s event at $400 are reported to have sold out within an hour, but money&rsquo;s the least important issue at the fest which boasts of barely survival infrastructure and a system of bartering amenities to free the spirit.
But as all underground movements go, Burning Man, which started in 1986, too has to deal with the problems of success: tech tycoons and rap stars have begun thronging to it.
However the last nail in its coffin might just prove to be the leggy diplomatic wife Jacqueline Lundquist&rsquo;s comment on a social networking site recently: &lsquo;I still need one more Burning Man ticket for Dick! ANYONE????&rsquo;
The &lsquo;Dick&rsquo; referred to, as insiders will tell you, is her husband Richard Frank Celeste, the distinguished American politician and a member of the Democratic Party who served as Ambassador to India a few years ago.
A breath of triumphalism &ldquo;There&rsquo;s an epidemic called &lsquo;hard work&rsquo; in Delhi. And the chief vector seems to be someone who moved here about 90 days ago,&rdquo; says our friend, the noted Delhi-based writer, Padma Rao.
<img title="Padma Rao" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/oct/Padma-Rao.jpg" alt="Padma Rao" /> Padma Rao
&ldquo;BSES actually called back - like a gazillion times - to check whether the electricity is back (after a brief outage had prompted me to complain), speaking in polite, dulcet tones,&rdquo; she says incredulously. &ldquo;NEVER in my life - and it&rsquo;s been a long one - has a bijli ghar EVER picked up the phone, let alone jot down a complaint, fix the problem and call back to confirm,&rdquo; says the senior journalist, whose much-awaited book on the Sri Lanka Tamil crisis will be out soon.
Unlike other members of her tribe, Rao has not succumbed to Modi-bashing. &ldquo;Happy days are here again. And a thumbs up to Modi,&rdquo; she says, adding in sotto voice, &ldquo;Yes, yes, I know that BSES is not under the central government and that Delhi hasn&rsquo;t had its own since that silly fellow resigned-but hey, we do live in the same city where Modi currently resides.&rdquo;
In these bleak times, her triumphalism comes as whiff of fresh air.

"I wasn't in the dining table scene because I refused to laugh at my daughter," says Soni Razdan about 'Genius of the Year', the Youtube clip, featuring her daughter, actress Alia Bhatt that&rsquo;s gone viral

Gabbana to Shabana

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"I wasn't in the dining table scene because I refused to laugh at my daughter," says Soni Razdan about 'Genius of the Year', the Youtube clip, featuring her daughter, actress Alia Bhatt that&rsquo;s gone viral

Gabbana to Shabana

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