Publisher and film producer Nari Hira threw a ‘no occasion’ party at his Breach Candy apartment which turned out to be the third wedding anniversary of his son Vikram. When you spot a filmland guest at Hira’s place, you’ll instantly know who’s working in his current film. There was Rohit Roy and yeah, he’s in Hira’s new film Apartment, which has been directed by Jagmohan Mundhra. Apartment also stars Tanushree Dutta and Neetu Chandra. The latter, one hears, has caught the fancy of her director, Jagmohan Mundhra.

The GQ (glam quotient) at Nari Hira’s party came in the wow form of Celina Jaitley who wore a flaming red, bare shoulder dress, perfect make-up and no jewellery at all. Celina, who has an army background and stayed with her parents on her dad’s different postings all over the country, is proficient in Bengali and calls people with a di or a da instead of the usual ji.

The IPL fever was on and Shilpa Shetty was all over the television screen. Someone wisecracked that Celina too must go as the glamorous front for the next richie-rich who wants to buy an IPL team, and make pots of money in the bargain. Celina loved the idea but she is so seriously cricket-challenged that she giggled at the image of herself at an IPL auction. “I’d be bidding, ‘That guy over there who’s 6 foot tall, or that one with the blue eyes, I want him’,” she laughed. “And I’d want only 6 footers in my team!”

Well, Shilpa Shetty didn’t know any better than Celina at one time and had even asked me to lend her my nine-year-old, cricket-crazy son if she ever went on a show that quizzed her on the game. But that was before she went to the Big Brother house and emerged a different person. Along with her fortunes, her knowledge has also gone up now and she knows the game well enough to sit there with confidence and do the team boss act.

With Preity Zinta also busy with her ‘boys’ (her team), there is one family in Bandra, Mumbai, that is breathing easy. There’s been so much talk about Preity’s interest in Kamalistan Studio, a huge Rs 600 crore property, that it almost seems as if Meena Kumari and Kamal Amrohi’s bodies have been exhumed. Meena Kumari died childless and the whole sprawling property went from her husband Kamal Amrohi to his children (one daughter, two sons) from his first wife. Now Kamal Amrohi’s son Shaandar is childless but he has been so besotted with Preity Zinta that, apart from sending her flowers and gifts every year on her birthday, he has also adopted her as his daughter.

The rest of the Amrohi clan has been a bit alarmed because ‘daughter’ Preity apparently frequents their house very proprietorially. With the entire Amrohi family looking at how much each of them can take home from their inheritance, they’re afraid that Shaandar will take his large chunk and hand it to Preity. However, they really need to relax because the Muslim Personal Law does not recognise adoption and Preity, anyway, is not going to officially become an Amrohi daughter. So why the sweat?

Meanwhile, Kamal Amrohi’s other son Tajdar has two strapping sons. One of them, Mashhoor, is engaged to Amjad Khan’s beautiful daughter Ahlam. Ahlam Khan is a theatre actress and like her illustrious father she’s quite a linguist, dabbling in English and Gujarati plays (without knowing a word of the latter lingo). Her fiancé is also an actor, currently shooting in Cape Town for Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt. The new Bhatt film is tentatively titled Crooked and, like most of their productions, stars Emraan Hashmi in the lead. The story revolves around the racial attacks in Australia but the Bhatts, who are pucca businessmen, seem to have struck a deal with the South African authorities to go and shoot there at the cheapest possible rates.

This Bhatt film co-stars a girl called Neha Sharma who is supposed to be seeing Chiranjeevi’s son. From what one hears, Emraan Hashmi is in a spot because, again like most Bhatt films, Crooked also has a kissing scene. But Chiranjeevi’s son has apparently instructed Neha that under no circumstances is she to kiss Emraan Hashmi!

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor, Movie Mag International