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When Poonam Dhillon threw her customary birthday party at a Sobo restaurant on April 17 (her birthday is on the 18th), two of the many guests were Ameesha Patel’s parents, Amit and Asha.
“Got Ameesha’s lovely invitation,” said I to Asha Patel. Ameesha had sent across a bottle of Dom Perignon lying on a bed of pink silk in a basket. That was her stylish invitation to the launch of Ameesha Productions, the filmmaking banner she has floated with partner Kuunal Goomer. Is there a romance there as tabloids smirk “good friend”? Doubtful because Kuunal admires Ameesha pretty openly and his wife Shaalu is almost always with them. Anyway, when the invitation was mentioned, Ameesha’s mother chirpily said, “Oh yes, Ameesha’s party on Saturday,” like she knew all about it.
Obviously, one asked, so Asha, do we see you there? Wrong question, it turned out, as Asha tried to do a cover-up and said weakly, “Let’s see, doubtful. My husband Amit is not going to be in town. And Ashmit will also be in Delhi.”
However, Ashmit did turn up for his sis. “My brother Ashmit flew in from Delhi, I’m grateful to him for being here,” said Ameesha in a speech that was both unrehearsed and emotional because she unabashedly turned teary on stage, overwhelmed by the presence of everybody she had invited.
And no, she had not invited her parents. The bad blood that set in years ago when Ameesha charged her parents with finishing all her earnings doesn’t seem to have been replaced by any great bonhomie. Strange because of two factors: one, her parents had named the kids Ashmit (Asha plus Amit) and Ameesha was also derived from Amit and Asha. The family was that close once upon a time. Secondly, the family was estranged when Ameesha Patel was being wooed by Vikram Bhatt. The Patel parents had often blamed Vikram for misleading their daughter and creating a rift between them. However, at Ameesha’s launch party, Vikram too, was conspicuously absent, although she had invited every director she had worked with. Anil Sharma who directed her in Gadar, the biggest blockbuster in Hindi cinema to date, was in high spirits as his film featured prominently in an audio visual (AV) that was screened at the party.
Whoever made that AV (Kuunal?), was evidently besotted because it was titled something like, The Odyssey Of The Most Celebrated Actor. And went on to trace Ameesha’s milestones right from Kaho Naa...Pyaar Hai and Gadar (the two blockbusters of her career) to Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic where she turned slinky sexy in a swimsuit. Once again, Vikram Bhatt and his Ankahee were out of the frame. And he didn’t figure even when Ameesha made her speech where she mentioned her first director Rakesh Roshan, Anil Sharma who gave her the role of Sakina in Gadar and Priyadarshan who cast her in an important supporting role in Bhool Bhulaiya. All these directors and more (Farhan and Zoya Akhtar, Madhur Bhandarkar, David Dhawan, Shirish Kunder et al) were present at Ameesha’s party. And Rishi Kapoor and Jackie too came to celebrate her new business venture.
With her silence on people like her parents and Vikram Bhatt, Ameesha made it amply clear who were her real supporters and who didn’t need to figure in her life anymore.
Jackie Shroff is undoubtedly a loyalist. When a few days later, Subhash Ghai threw a cosy party in his terrace-duplex apartment on Carter Road, Jackie came dressed neatly in white shirt and jacket and stayed right till the end of the party. On a soup and salad diet, Jackie has lost so much weight that he’s back to looking handsome. And back to charming the women. When there was some gaana-bajana on the terrace and there were requests for Jackie to take the mike and sing, he shyly slipped away. He went into the house, found Ghai’s wife Rehana and three other women curled up, chatting. And there he sang for them, Mora gora ang lai le beautifully in complete sur and full of sensuous passion, stopping in between to laud Gulzar’s lyrics and Lata Mangeshkar’s nazakat. He spoke eloquently about the beauty and sensuality in the song, more comfortable before his female audience of four than out there before a full party on the terrace. Ah, the privileges of being a woman, especially when Jackie Shroff is around.
