High tea at Shilpa's

The lissome Shilpa Shetty Kundra invited us for hightea this Tuesday to her stunning Suzanne Khandecorated home in Juhu We try and miss no opportunity to visit our childhood neighbourhood and though it took us a very long time to get there we were glad to have made itShilpa resides in a seafacing condominium built on the precincts of the cottage once owned by the late Sunita Pitamber on who we have penned an article in a fashion magazine this month ldquoAmitabh says itrsquos always a very special place to visit as itrsquos where he used to bring Jaya when they were datingrdquo said Shilpa as she served us a generous helping of gently steamed water chestnuts and a chilled pudina welcome drinkShilpa Shetty Kundra Nisha JamVwal and R Chhaya MomayaldquoEverything you see on the table is wholesome nutritious and from my book The Great Indian Dietrdquo she said pointing to a table groaning with delicacies Both Nisha JamVwal and Chhaya Momaya who were also present spoke about their tryst with healthy eating and livingThen Luke Coutinho the charming young holistic nutritionist and exercise physiologist who has coauthored the book with Shilpa spoke about the study he was conducting at Yale on cancer patients and their treatment through foodsldquoThere have been path breaking successes of patients who have been weaned off chemotherapy by being put on the dietrdquo said the founder director of Herbs Nutrition Pvt Ltd ldquoI am so grateful to my parents who inculcated healthy eating habits in usrdquo said ShilpaldquoIndian food is the very best of all Why on earth should we eat quinoa when we can have rajma and brown ricerdquo she said ldquoRed rice is even betterrdquo said JamVwal Momaya nodded thoughtfully at this but didnrsquot look too convinced Shilpa passed around some more water chestnutsldquoI have sent the book to our PMrdquo said Shilpa ldquoHe is a vegetarian and believes in healthy Indian farerdquo she said Thatrsquos when we came up with what we thought was the wittiest line of the evening ldquoYesrdquo we said ldquoOur PM loves dalrdquo we said then added ldquoTour dalrdquo ldquoBrilliantrdquo said JamVwal ldquoSuperrdquo said Momaya And we were happy to see both ladies agreeing for once over somethingLunch with AshaSalvador Dali Francoise Gilot Jonas Salk Paloma Picasso Bina Ramani Kamaldevi Chattopadhaya Akbar Dumpy Ahmad Simi Garewal Harindranth Chattopadhyaya Boy George Naveen Papoo Patnaik Tarun Tahiliani Romulus Whitaker Khushwant Singh Salim Ali The Shah of Iran Asha Sheth Bob Geldof Raj Kapoor if yoursquod eavesdropped at a lunch yesterday taking place at the Yacht Clubrsquos Dining Room where we were catching up with old friends mdash including the New Yorkbased jazz singer Asha Puthli mdash these would have been the names you would have heard discussedNaveen Patnaik Asha Puthli PicAFP Rajmata Gayatri DeviPuthli is an icon of many worlds as a young woman this daughter of a wellheeled publishing clan her father owned the first offset printing house in India had left India in the Sixties and rapidly become the toast of the fashionshowbizglam Andy Warhol set in New York acting in avant garde movies and cutting path breaking discsOver a fine fish Veronica no kidding some couscous salad and asparagus soup OK there was a steak and roast potatoes and a carrot and ginger cake too Puthli a natural storyteller told us of how she might have been the inspiration for not only the roles played by Simi Garewal in Siddhartha and Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram but also for the one played by Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat Yes such was the banter that took place as fellow lunchers measured their lives out in coffeespoons around usMany stories were unprintable many were fantastical But one we must share when he spoke of the iconic Puthli to us Naveen Papoo Patnaik now all powerful CM of Orissa at that time a pillar of Lutyenrsquos Delhi had said ldquoThe Rajmata of Jaipur used to always say fondly of Asha she can turn a gay man straight and a straight woman gayrdquoAs we were saying it was a helluva lunch to eavesdrop on yesterday at the Yacht ClubIn a city that is notoriously lateNext week will see the coming together of two iconic luxury watch brands at an event to showcase the 2015 collection of one of the brandrsquos watches for the first time in IndiaVivaan and Nikhila Bhatena and R Divya PalatThe event will take place next Wednesday at a mid town rooftop bar and a discerning audience is expected Incidentally the event has been put together by Nikhila Palat a former longtime PR personality of a well known fivestar and sister to the talented actress and theatre personality Divya PalatWith this outing Nikhila who is married to hunky actor Vivaan Bhatena he recently featured in Bolly movies Hero and Katti Batti makes her foray into entrepreneurship with her management startup And given the iconic brand names involved it looks like Mumbairsquos notoriously late latifs Midnightrsquos Children as we call them will show up for this one on timeMediarsquos musical chairsSources say that the muchawaited collaboration between a new English channel and a foreign media conglomerate will not go through after allA few months ago we along with many others had written about this impending partnership but word comes through that the foreign entity has agreed to remain yoked to its current Indian media house even after its recent change of hands mdash and loss of key personnel The mediarsquos game of musical chairs is alive and kicking