Fan music

If you’re in showbiz, fans have a way of popping up everywhere. Music composer Anu Malik, who was at the Eden Gardens recently to watch the Mumbai Indians vs KKR match, was accosted by a seven-year-old autograph seeker. Malik smilingly obliged. But then the child nudged her mother to pose the question she was too shy to ask: Was he going to judge Indian Idol Junior? When Anu shook his head the little girl burst into tears and said, “You are my Indian Idol!” That got Malik, who has served as a judge in Indian Idol many times, misty-eyed too. Now he swears he will be back on TV soon. He just has to decide which show would be the right platform for him. So if you see Malik straddling the small screen again, you know whom you have to thank for it.

Fact and fiction

This would be of interest to science as well as literary buffs. On Friday, a book on scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, written by Amit Ganguly, was launched at Presidency University in the presence of academic luminaries such as Bikash Sinha, Homi Bhabha professor department of atomic energy, Malabika Sarkar, vice-chancellor, Presidency, and others. The book, Bonds Die Hard, “is a fast paced fiction based on the eventful life and times of our iconic scientist Sir J.C. Bose, in the background of his sparsely known but unique friendship with Tagore,” says the author, who did his PhD at IIT Kharagpur and post-doctoral at Pittsburgh. The fictionalised life of a great man could make for fascinating reading.

Tantra tome

Who said the study of science makes you allergic to tantra and mantra? Take Adi (he doesn’t use a surname), a science graduate from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard. He’s written a book called Tantra and it employs that occult “science” to combat the forces of evil. The story is about a young woman, Anu Aggarwal, who moves from New York to Delhi, and comes up against Tantric forces that she must battle to save the city. Aggarwal employs mantras and other weapons to take on vampires and sundry evil forces. The author says he has tried to combine Indian philosophy and spirituality in a modern setting. Wow. Talk about revisionism.

French connection

We love that comely fashionista Sonam Kapoor. But it appears that her appeal extends beyond India too. A little bird told us that a French film magazine crew has been following Anil Kapoor’s daughter around to do a feature on a day in the life of a Bollywood celeb. So wherever the lady has been lately — shooting a movie or spending time with family and friends — she’s been shadowed by the French team. Kapoor is slated to attend the Cannes festival this year — as she did last year. There’s a clear French connection here.

Benaras to Gurgaon

There are so many of them now, it’s getting to be downright boring. We mean those who first get a management degree and then decide to become an author. But Siddharth Tripathi insists that he wrote The Virgins not because he wanted to conform to a stereotype. “No, I didn’t write it because everyone else was doing it,” says the Gurgaon-based author. “In fact, I come from a family of academicians and everyone in my family has written a book.” Published by Fingerprint, an independent publishing imprint, The Virgins is a coming-of-age book set in Benaras, the hometown of the young author. Autobiographical in many ways, the book will soon see a sequel. No prizes for guessing where the next one would be set. “A lot of Gurgaon is going to be there,” admits the debutant author. But of course.