Not leaving on a Jet plane

Suhel Seth and Abhishek BachchanA maelstrom had broken out earlier this week on Twitter when two garrulous gents known for their gifts of the gab Abhishek Bachchan and Suhel Seth began tweeting their exasperation at the tardiness of the airlines they were flying It began last Saturday morning when Suhel Seth started getting increasingly irritated with the fact that hersquod boarded his flight to Delhi along with all the other passengers and then the entire planeload was left to twiddle their thumbs on the tarmac because the pilot had not shown upldquoThe callous behaviour of jetairways needs to be taken cognisance of by the DGCA Ready to go waiting for the goddamn Captainrdquo was one of his more polite outbursts Unknown to him Abhishek Bachchan was equally outraged for more or less the same reasons ldquoWell done Jet Airways Entire plane boarded without any pilots on board Still waiting and hopingrdquo he tweetedWhat brought the irascible gents together was producer Bunty Walia obviously a common link ldquoThatrsquos what happened to us yesterday Seated in d aircraft for an hour n half w no sign of d cockpit crewrdquo hersquod tweeted This happy confluence of grumblers then began to exchange a fair amount of grouses aimed at poorly managed airlines What came in particularly for their criticism were the hamhanded PR responses to their critiques from the airlinesSuhel even got the Aviation minister Jayant Sinha involved and tweeted to him ldquoNow that yoursquore in the Civil Aviation Ministry why donrsquot you take steps to protect consumers from airlines like jetairwaysrdquo That managed to evoke a satisfactory response from the ministerHis groovy holiness in NYCTowards the latter part of Arundhati Subramanianrsquos lsquoMore Than A Lifersquo on Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev the author wonders if there is danger given his sociability that her Guru could become a Page Three phenomena The globetrotting mystic motorcyclist allays her fears by explaining that his fraternising with the rich famous and powerful is a necessary activity to get his message across to the largest numbers in the most effective waysMeera Gandhi and Sadhguru Jaggi VasudevSomething of this nature appears to have occurred recently when his groovy holiness celebrated Diwali at the wellappointed home of uber NYC society hostess the erstwhile Mumbai girl Meera Gandhirsquos sumptuous upper east side home It had only last week witnessed her hosting a party for Cherie Blairersquos birthday Described as lsquoan intimate gathering of 100 friendsrsquo Sadhgurursquos discourse was upbeatldquoThe journey of life is joyful Please live it joyfully and in peace How fortunate we are to be alive on this earth nowrdquo It was followed by a lsquodelicious hot vegetarian dinner and Mithairsquo according to the hostess who presented her guests with copies of Sadhgurursquos book as return gifts ldquoItrsquos a true guide for todayrsquos livingrdquo she was overheard telling guests The message to the largest numbers in the most effective way for sureWhat wersquod like to know is this since the object of Sethrsquos and Bachchanrsquos ire was Jet Airways was chairman Naresh Goyal experiencing a hiccupping fit while all this took place Given the high levels of anger on display the answer to that is most likelyNo kids or weapons please wersquore BritishIt appears to be a more than ordinary skittishness that has resulted in the wording of British high commissioner to Delhi Sir Dominic Asquithrsquos invitation to the reception hersquos hosting for visiting Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Theresa May next week in the CapitalTheresa MayOf course usual protocols and dress code requirements have been maintained But what points to a heightened level of security are the words lsquoAddress will be disclosed later to the datersquo followed by the enigmatic lsquoentry from Gate No 2rsquo Also we notice that lsquochildrenrsquo have been listed along with other banned items such as lsquoweaponsrsquo and lsquophotographyrsquoOf course this will not deter the countryrsquos leading anglophiles business leaders and glitterati from hotfooting it to the capital for their darshanMore than a coincidenceldquoThank you so much for your wishes Such a lovely time with all siblings and dadrdquo Lisa Haydon had texted in response to our congratulations on her marriage to Londonbased biz man Dino Lalvani yesterday The actress who plays Ranbir Kapoorrsquos ditsy dumb overlyWestern golddigging ex in KJorsquos ADHM to delicious perfection has been receiving many accolades for her spot on portrayalLisa HaydonBut wait a minute is the character she plays so well purely a figment of Karan Joharrsquos imagination Or has Ranbir Kapoorrsquos ditsy dumb overlyWestern golddigging ex in ADHM been created as a parody of a very real and living person After all werenrsquot these the very reasons the star was weaned away from youknowwho only recently by his erwellwishers Jusrsquo sayinrsquoCheque pleaseThe contentious payout that was recently demanded of a producer director for featuring a Pakistani actor which offended so many has attracted much comment Now it turns out that things were not as simple when the demand was made in the first placeApparently when the producer director had been called in to settle the matter by a top official the demand had been that he donated 5 crores lsquoto the partyrsquo Knowing full well that it would have to be in cash and thus untraceable the quickwitted gent had responded by suggesting that whereas hersquod be quite happy to hand over the sum why didnrsquot he buttress the nationalist mood by making a cheque out to the Army Welfare FundOf course this noble suggestion took the powersthatbe by surprise but they were in no position to turn it down given the selfrighteousness of their stand and so the producer director got his way and handed over the cheque And the rest as they say is history Phew