Karan Johar’s special screening of Student Of The Year (SOTY) at Yash Raj Studios turned out to be a starry and fun party. Javed Akhtar (minus Shabana but plus daughter Zoya) was chatty as he tucked into chaat at a special counter set up before the screening. It was like the warm times when Karan’s father Yash Johar was alive. Every time Yash hosted a preview, he would ask a five-star hotel at Juhu to take over the catering. They would set up counters and tables outside the preview theatre and there would be eats and coffee before, at the half-way mark and after the screening, with lots of stars around to do plenty of networking.

“I wanted to show the film to all of you earlier but with my trips to Delhi (for the hectic promotion) and Bebo’s wedding, I was busy right till the 16th. So I’ll show the film to all of you together on the 17th,” he promised. “All of you” included an array of stars ranging from Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan to Anil and Arjun Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Imran Khan and half-a-dozen handpicked media names (including a couple of television show hosts) without their cameras. This ensured a relaxed interaction with everybody like it used to be in the days of yore.

Amitabh with a large shawl wrapped around his shoulders was dressed for the chill of the Yash Raj preview theatre. He had a long chat with Anushka Sharma (looking hot in hot pants but brrr, didn’t she feel the cold?) during interval. Karan had arranged a live pasta counter, Burmese khowsuey and had a tava of mithai laid out among other goodies for all the guests.

They had screened the trailer of Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola before SOTY, so both Anushka and her co-star Imran Khan got heaps of compliments from everybody for what looked like a wacky Haryanvi film by Vishal Bhardwaj. Quite a change from his dark Maqbool- Omkara- Kaminey- Saat Khoon Maaf genre of cinema. And a sea-change for Aamir’s city slick nephew Imran to go so completely rustic.

During interval, Amitabh circulated, met everybody at leisure and graciously hugged and wished the three newcomers of SOTY (the intense and dashing Siddharth Malhotra from Delhi, David Dhawan’s son Varun who’s an adept dancer with a naughty, laidback personality, and Mahesh Bhatt’s tender young daughter Alia Bhatt). Varun wisecracked, “Tell us what you think of us after the full film. Yes, we’re going to be around to collect all your compliments!”

Farah who has choreographed two of the better songs in the film (Radha and Ishq wala love) fetched up in a black kurti which made her look even slimmer. She went up to Amitabh and Jaya to show them how she had looked in the car en route to their huge party on October 10, before the gruelling two-hour traffic drained everybody’s energy.

Jaya was apologetic. The first thing she said to me was, “I’m so sorry for not having looked after all of you personally,” while Amitabh explained that his phone had got jammed with over 3,000 messages. “I know I can get it working again only if I delete all the messages but I’d like to read them before I can do that,” he said.

Hrithik Roshan was away shooting a commercial and Arjun Rampal was busy, but their wives Sussanne and Meher fetched up together. The Roshan-Rampal friendship has got thicker with the two families holidaying and socialising together. It was an intimate, personalised sort of ambience inside the theatre because when Arjun Rampal’s Chakravyuh trailer came on, Meher and Sussanne clapped the loudest. There was Farah too in one scene and there were cheers once again. The loudest applause was of course for Amitabh’s short Deewaar sequence in the temple because the man himself was right there in our midst.

October 17 was also Simi Garewal’s birthday but she slipped in quietly to watch SOTY without a fuss and didn’t even want anyone to know that it was her special day. Instead of cutting a cake (“which embarrasses me no end”), she flagged off her own personal website www.simigarewal.com which should be fully operational in a couple of days. “Give me 48 hours to sort out a few glitches please,” she explained. On the website, you’ll find Simi talking of her romances, her brief marriage et al for the first time, and it has all been painstakingly and personally written by her.

A late night owl, Simi sent an SMS at 5.30am to say she loved the film. As for me, I wish I’d met scorching hot Siddharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan when I was 30 years younger.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal