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It's the season of over-40 dads. With whispers of Shah Rukh and Gauri Khan having a third baby, this time through surrogacy, everybody did the usual lazy desk job and concluded that the couple was inspired by Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao. If the news of a surrogate baby arriving at Mannat is true (it has not been officially confirmed by SRK, his wife or their doctor), it is entirely possible that the first idea came from Shah Rukh's bête noire, Salman Khan's family.

Unknown to any, Salman's younger brother Sohail and his wife Seema had brought home a surrogate baby months before the arrival of Aamir and Kiran's Azad. For reasons best known to them, Sohail and Seema instructed their close ones not to go public with it. Therefore, the world congratulated them on becoming parents a second time over and even remarked on how quickly she had shed her post-partum kilos, without having an inkling of the baby- making procedure involved. Not that the procedure matters, for all of them are ecstatic parents today. The only difference is that it took an Aamir to step forward and remove the unnecessary purdah on surrogacy.

If only everybody had known about Sohail's baby, they would have also realised that Gauri Khan is very close to his wife Seema. Gauri's famous celebrity wives' clique consists of pals like Bhavna Chunky Panday, Maheep Sanjay Kapoor, Anu Dewan (from the richie-rich construction company), former actress Neelam Kothare (married to actor Samir Soni) and Seema Khan. By the way, Seema also happens to be Chunky's niece; so she and Bhavna share a comfortable familial bond as well. And everybody knows that Bhavna is a Gauri Khan favourite. QED.

Complicated? Suffice to say that Gauri knows Seema well and she heard about surrogacy first from the Sohail Khan residence before anybody even knew that Aamir and Kiran had opted for a similar procedure.

If the third baby story is true, then there is also the much-rumoured Gauri-Shah Rukh-Priyanka Chopra triangle to be considered. Generally speaking, it is strange but down the ages an extra- marital relationship has never really come in the way of a man simultaneously having a third (or fourth) baby with his official wife. Years ago, when Sanjay Khan was involved with Zeenat Aman (they even had a secret nikkah), wife Zarine had her fourth child (and first son) Zayed Khan. Amjad Khan was known to be seeing Kalpana Iyer when his wife had their third child.

And so, the arrival of a new baby in a couple's life does not really reflect on the status of a man's extra-curricular activities outside the house. Instead, it is worth acknowledging the truth in Jaya Bachchan's sharp remark, 'Does the other woman really think that the man goes home to his wife and twiddles his thumb?' She had made that pertinent observation many moons ago. It still holds good.

A question that's going around today is on south Indian male stars who have infamously failed to make waves in Hindi cinema. This is an industry that has always had a very soft corner for the traditional looking belles of the south while never according the men from the area the same warm welcome. Some of Rajinikanth's or Kamal Haasan's films like Andhaa Kanoon or Ek Duuje Ke Liye may have worked but they didn't make the grade as big-selling heroes of Hindi cinema. Even today, when gym-toned young men like Prithviraj (a huge star in Kerala) dabble in films like Aaiya and Aurangzeb, they don't pack the same impact here as they do in their own territory.

However, maybe Prithvi will one day break that jinx because after two disheartening failures, he has stepped into a real big film — he has replaced John Abraham in Farah Khan's Happy New Year. This Shah Rukh Khan starrer and home production is going to be a big ticket release in 2014. It stars SRK, Abhishek Bachchan, Prithviraj and Boman Irani, with Farah still to finalise a young boy (like Arjun Kapoor) and the main heroine.

How did the star from Kerala bag this biggie? Farah wanted another fab body like John's... and Prithvi fit the bill. Interestingly, John Abraham too is a Keralite — his dad is from Prithvi's state.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal