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Adnan Sami’s lawyer Vibhav Krishna (who was inclined towards acting at one time) was upbeat on the day he lost his case in the Bombay High Court — the young man who dons a black robe at work was getting married the very next morning at a hastily-arranged ceremony at the Hare Rama Hare Krishna temple on Ram Navami. On an auspicious day like that you can imagine how packed the temple was. Vibhav rose to fame the day he took on financier Bharat Shah’s case and kept him out of jail. Of course, the richie-rich diamond merchant was there at the essentially close, family wedding.
Adnan Sami and his new wife Roya didn’t make it to the pheras. Still honeymooning, I guess. Adnan now intends fighting his case against former wife Sabah Galadari in the Supreme Court. It’s quite a funny scenario actually, because both warring parties seem to be celebrating, not together but individually.
Adnan loves having get-togethers at the apartment he shares with his son Azaan and new wife Roya. At a dinner at his place a few months ago (while the battle with Sabah was very much on), almost all singers (Talat Aziz, Shaan, Alka Yagnik, Aadesh Srivastav) had turned up, except Abhijeet of course. Abhijeet continues to wage war against Pakistani singers being used in India.
He may have lost weight (thank you diet, thank you liposuction), but Adnan still loves his drink and his menus are lavish (like stuffed turkey and lamb, cooked Pak style). He introduced his teenage son Azaan to all his guests and played two numbers that his son had composed and sung. “When my dad died, Azaan composed a song that went I want the rains to come, so they don’t see the tear in my eyes... I was so moved that he could come up with something so beautiful,” Adnan said with fatherly pride. He is making up for lost time as his son lived with his mom (Adnan’s first wife, Zeba Bakhtiar) in Pakistan and London for the first dozen years of his life. For the last couple of years, Adnan and Zeba seem to have made up and are on amicable terms. It’s wife No. 2 Sabah that he has to contend with in court, and her family’s millions which allegedly kept the musician in comfort have much to do with it.
If Adnan is in a good mood so is Sabah who is seeing herself as a champion of women’s rights after winning the case in the high court. While Adnan’s lawyers want to prove that his marriage to Sabah has no sanction under the Muslim Personal Law, her battle is to prove that they were indeed legally married.
What is really strange is that Sabah Galadari, hailing from a well-known, wealthy family in Dubai, and Adnan Sami, of Pak origin, are fighting over vast property bought in a plush housing society in Lokhandwala, Mumbai. And you have dyed-in-the-wool Indian actor Shabana Azmi shouting herself hoarse that she can’t buy a flat here because of her religious faith!
Incidentally, Sanjay Dutt’s wife Maanyata is said to privately consider Dilshan her real name. So why doesn’t she just call herself by that name? In an arena where the Khans rule the roost, why would anybody have objections to whatever name she is comfortable with?
Sanjay Dutt’s ex-buddy Sanjay Gupta surfaced this week, after months of hibernation, with two releases on the same day. The two films, The Great Indian Butterfly (in English) and Pankh (the Bipasha Basu starrer), will probably share the same box office fate too, but the filmmaker who made technically slick, mindless movies with Dutt has at least had the guts to start an art house banner to back small, offbeat films. For now that’s quite a gamble since both his films lay waiting in the cans for quite some time for want of a buyer and are the kind that can, at the most, win some appreciation from critics and film festivals.
Sandhya Mridul, that uninhibited actress who had the gumption to play a lesbian in Arshad Warsi’s Hum Tum Aur Ghost, is a scream, off-screen as well. At a private screening of The Great Indian Butterfly in which she’s used everyday four-letter words with panache, taken off her kurta very casually and kissed screen-husband Aamir Bashir with passion, Sandhya sat in the last row at Yash Raj Studio’s preview theatre with close buddies Maria Goretti (Arshad Warsi’s wife) and Mini Mathur (who’s married to director Kabir Khan), to watch the film.
There’s a scene in The Great Indian Butterfly where Koel Purie, playing Aamir Bashir’s girlfriend, congratulates him on his marriage (to Sandhya Mridul) and asks the inevitable girlie question, “Is she prettier than me?” “Yes,” answered Sandhya very spontaneously from the last row, sending the whole theatre into peals of laughter.
