Home run

Tennis superstar Leander Paes couldn’t quite serve an ace on his first appearance in films. But, hey, Paes is not one to give up without a fight. So no sooner did Rajdhani Express go off the rails, Paes decided to get up, dust himself off and launch into his next movie venture. If the grapevine is to be believed, he has now decided to do a Bengali film. Apparently, he has liked a particular script and work may soon start on the film. It would be a return to roots for Paes, who is very much a Calcutta boy. Who knows, perhaps he’ll strike it lucky on home ground.

Safety plea

Karnataka’s energy minister Shobha Karandlaje seems to have forgotten which side of the fence she’s on. Following the Delhi gang rape, she has been shooting off letter after letter to the chief minister, Jagadish Shettar, accusing the government of not doing enough to ensure the safety of women in Karnataka. Karandlaje should have remembered that it’s never a good idea to turn the gun on her own colleagues. Now her detractors are asking where her concern for the safety of women was in the four-and-a-half years that the BJP has been ruling the state. Well, it so happens that former Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa was her mentor. And mentors, after all, can do no wrong.

Fitness tome

Losing it is a tome written by Internet entrepreneur and fitness enthusiast Dhruv Gupta and former national level basketball player Prachi Gupta. It claims not to burden you with an information overload insofar as weight management is concerned. It offers you 100 simple ways to shed those kilos. Not to mention some concise, myth-busting strategies to continue exercising. As the authors put it, “This book helps readers ease into an exercise pattern, while highlighting what’s important and what isn’t. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, stomach crunches may be a waste of your time.” Hmm. Illuminating.

Body beautiful

In an earlier era Jane Fonda wowed the world with her Dancercise fitness videos. Today Bollywood churns out its own stars who peddle their presumably unique fitness routines. B-town’s sexy pin-up Bipasha Basu is the latest to jump onto the bandwagon. She recently launched Break Free, a fitness home video that is a follow-up to her first workout DVD, Love Yourself. And now she’s planning to extend her brand franchise to a series of dance workout videos. Basu says that unlike the boring one-two-three-crunch and up, her dance routine is fun and can turn into a family affair. Rekha, Shilpa Shetty, Lara Dutta, Bipasha Basu… Bollywood beauties are definitely on a health-is-wealth trip. Er, make that health for the practitioners of their fitness mantra and wealth for the lovely ladies.

Top Khan

Talk about the ubiquitous influence of the social media. Zee Cine Awards has introduced a whole new awards category to felicitate the star who enjoys the maximum adulation on social networking sites. And right now, Salman Khan, the man with the Midas touch in the box office, also seems to be the one who pulls the maximum weight on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on. According to data revealed by Asterii Analytics, Khan had 74,08,859 fans on Facebook, 31,88,226 followers on Twitter, 60,567 videos on YouTube, 5,77,919 followers on Twitter fan clubs, 7,57,057 fans on Facebook fan clubs and 2,774 followers on Google+. “Using this 4-phase process we came to a single score and the top three candidates were Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. And the winner was — Salman Khan,” a company source says. Now, those numbers are no less staggering than the Rs 100-crore-plus that Salman Khan films tot up at the box office.