There's a marked silence around BJP MP Vinod Khanna, the screen hunk of the 70s and 80s. When he was dropped from a parliamentary committee, there were a few offhand remarks about the new dispensation being strict about a member's performance.

But the truth is, 70-year-old Vinod has been silently battling a dreaded disease. He successfully fought it a few years ago, reportedly with an alternative therapy, but it is believed to have returned. Which is not good news at all. The government is aware of it and is maintaining the veil of secrecy around his condition.

The last time I met him, Vinod had talked about Shobhaa De publishing his autobiography. One hopes that the Gurdaspur MP meets the deadline.

Meanwhile, his son Akshaye Khanna has almost wrapped up his work on the Ittefaq sequel. Although the franchise is the property of BR Films, the 2017 version is being co-produced by Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar. Ittefaq was pathbreaking in its time for being a songless thriller. "With me around, you think it can remain songless?" laughed Karan. "I'm sure we'll find some way of bringing music into it."

Akshaye, who was excited about playing Sunil Dutt in Rajkumar Hirani's biopic on Sanjay Dutt, was disappointed when he didn't pass the looks test. "We tried our best but even with prosthetics he just couldn't look that age. He was too young for the role," said Raju. An older Paresh Rawal, thus, stepped in as Dutt Senior.

Raju has been extremely particular about every actor looking the part and it's astonishing how sharply he zeroed in on the striking resemblance Ranbir had to Sanju's long, angular face. But Ranbir, too, had to go through a test and he landed the role only after Raju was convinced that he could be made to look like Dutt.

It hasn't been an easy time for Ranbir, who has a stake as co-producer in the unreleased Jagga Jasoos . One isn't referring to his uneasy personal equation with co-star Katrina Kaif but to the film itself, which should've been in the theatres a long time ago. The promo, which promised a breezy, musical entertainer from the very able Anurag Basu, was out months ago but once again, the film couldn't make it to a March release as originally intended. In fact, one hears that the delays have burgeoned its cost to about Rs 90 crore and there are whispers that Disney may try to sell it to an interested party for over Rs 100 crore - which only means that a new release date is still far away. It's a rocky start to Ranbir's parallel career as producer.

The reference to Vinod Khanna's autobiography reminds me of Asha Parekh's bio, The Hit Girl , penned by writer Khalid Mohamed. Since big saleable names matter, Asha has got Salman Khan to write the foreword for it.

There's an interesting story about Asha Parekh's writer and Rishi Kapoor's book that was recently published. The story goes that Rishi had originally tapped Khalid to co-author it with him. But the writer was simultaneously in talks with Anil Kapoor to pen his life story. When Rishi heard about it, he did a little war dance. He wanted the writer to be exclusive to him, so he dropped Khalid and got veteran journalist Meena Iyer on board. Meanwhile, Anil scrapped his plans of the bio. "I heard there's no money in it. So why would I waste my time on it?" he grinned to me.

Talking of books, it made a lot of noise when the film rights of Amish's The Immortals of Meluha were snapped up by Karan's Dharma Productions. But when plans of filming the bestseller were dropped, it was noiseless. I wonder if anybody even knows that the time period mentioned in the contract lapsed a little while ago without any attempt by Dharma to start the film. With the contract null and void, all plans to turn Meluha into a film have also been quietly shelved.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author