Double bill

This New Year Bengalis in Delhi can look forward to a double delight. For the first time ever, the capital will witness Sharmila Tagore and Soumitra Chatterjee on stage in Key Tumi, a musical journey, which revolves around an imaginary open letter written by a woman to Rabindranath Tagore. She is a timeless woman — one who expresses affection, love, friendship, dejection and despondency in her different letters. She could be Labanya of Tagore’s Shesher Kobita or even his sister-in-law Kadambari Devi. Strangely, their journeys and questions are similar in many ways. And who better than Sharmila Tagore and Soumitra Chatterjee to dramatise this passionate musical journey on stage?

King of cool

Shah Rukh Khan is not a star for nothing: the man sure knows how to wow people. A few days ago, he was in Delhi when he suddenly decided to meet theatre director N.K. Sharma — whom the actor had known when he was a Delhi boy and in Barry John’s theatre group. SRK had apparently heard that Sharma — whose group, Act One, has produced a whole host of Bollywooders from Ashish Vidyarthi and Manoj Bajpai to Swanand Kirkire — was helping actor Imran Khan hone his acting skills. So he dropped by with the crew of Don 2 and managed to put everybody else in the shade. He backslapped Sharma’s group members, joked and used all the Hindi slangs that the Dilliwallah is known for. When he left after a brief 20 minutes, he’d added a few fans to his legion of followers. No wonder they call him King Khan.

Veggie star

Tamil actor Dhanush is in the race for an award. And no, it has nothing to do with his hit song Kolaveri Di that has taken the country by storm. Dhanush and Bollywood actress Vidya Balan have taken early leads in “India’s Hottest Vegetarian Celebrity of 2011”, a contest conducted by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) every year to promote vegetarianism. PETA will announce the winner in January. Dhanush, who was virtually unknown outside the south prior to Kolaveri Di, has raced ahead of other veggie celebrities like Kareena Kapoor, Hema Malini, Vivek Oberoi, and Ayesha Takia. Blame it on that Tanglish ditty.

Math meister

Was he fated to write the biography of Indian mathematical genius, Srinivas Ramanujam, wonders Robert Kanugel. Otherwise, why is it that when he came to Chennai to research the biography in 1988, he ended up sharing an airport autorickshaw with the grandson of Ramanujam’s former boss at the Madras Port Trust? “Was that good luck or something else? Even mathematicians might find it hard to work out the probability,” says Kanugel, whose book on Ramanujam, The Man Who Knew Infinity, was published in 1991. In Chennai last week to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the mathematician who died when he was just 32, Kanugel confirmed that shooting for a movie based on the book would begin next year and that actor Madhavan would play the lead role. Let’s hope the film rekindles interest in India’s forgotten genius.