Howzzat!

Authors are getting younger and younger by the day. The new kid on the block is precisely that — a new kid. But Upneet Grover, a second year student at the Faculty of Management Studies in Delhi, isn’t complaining. His book — Cricket till I die — was recently published by Cedar Books, the fiction imprint of Pustak Mahal. He tells us he started writing while he was doing his internship, and had “time to kill”. A passion for cricket — along with an interest in writing — egged him on. The outcome, the 24-year-old engineering graduate says, is “a heady concoction” of cricket, office life, love, friendship and dreams. With the subcontinent focused on World Cup Cricket, Grover’s got his timing right. You can call it a clean delivery.

A plus

What’s in a name? Plenty, when it’s longer than the English alphabet. But if politicians and actors can do it, why can’t the scion of the erstwhile Mysore royal family play around with his name? Of course, it was quite a mouthful to begin with in any case. Still, Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar now wants to add an extra ‘a’ to it and club his two last names together. So welcome Srikantadatta Narasimharaajawadiyar. The reasons for the change, he explains, are not superstitious. “Raja when pronounced in Sanskrit should be read ‘Raaja’. So the change,” he says. That’s one name the Indian news channels — to say nothing of those abroad — should devote an entire workshop to.

Ghazal guzzler

And there we were, thinking Vishal Bharadwaj had enough on his platter. But now we are told that the writer, director and music composer wants more. This time he wants to make his mark as a ghazal singer. Apparently, Urdu poet Bashir Badr left such an impact on the director of 7 Khoon Maaf that he now wants to launch an album of ghazals written by the poet, and sung by the man of many hats. We don’t know how the venture is going to be, but we are told that his wife Rekha, quite an accomplished ghazal singer, is going to add her voice to his. What was that about too many cooks?

Kat’s cords

Roll over Kishore, Katrina is here. The singer who acted is now being nudged out (one can always try, right?) by an actress who wants to sing. If the buzz in B-town is to be believed, Katrina Kaif will soon he crooning a number for her upcoming Yash Raj film Mere Brother Ki Dulhan. Apparently, her co-star Ali Zafar, a pop singer from Pakistan, urged her to test her playback skills, and Kat agreed. Since Kat had taken part in an album of nursery rhymes brought out by composer A.R. Rahman last year, she is pretty confident of being able to do justice to the song. Well, she threw her midriff — and various other parts of the body — at the audience rather effectively in Sheila ki jawani. Now we have to see if she can throw her voice as well.

Tie breaker

Salman Khan’s book of friends may be a thin volume, but it’s not going in for a smaller version — at least not yet. Some had feared that he would break up with old friend Sajid Nadiadwala when the latter signed up Sallu’s bête noire, Shah Rukh Khan, for his new film Two States. But the Sallu-Sajid ties are going strong, thank you. The filmmaker asserts that he does nothing without consulting his actor friend. “Salman and I share 18 years of bonding. We have been together through the thick and thin of many developments in our career. Even the smallest developments in my life don’t happen without Salman’s counsel. Everything that takes place in my life bears the stamp of Salman’s counsel,” he says. Does that mean Sallu is now viewing SRK with rose-coloured spectacles, instead of the old jaundiced eye?