Watching Akshay Kumar have a quiet dinner for two with his full blown, pregnant wife Twinkle (also called Tina) at Sun--Sand hotel in Juhu, Mumbai, was a delight. “We do this all the time. Will you join us,” asked Akshay politely as he dug into a typical Punjabi meal.

Every time diet-conscious Akshay wants a dal, subzi, chicken makhani dinner, he heads to the same hotel, always with Tina and sometimes with 11-year-old son Aarav. What he orders is also the same Punjabi fare. Being weight conscious, husband and wife stick to one roti each but Akshay likes to wash it all down with a robust round of jalebi and rabdi. You can’t take the Punjabi out of Akki, especially when he takes a break from his health food routine. What remains unchanged is that he is an early eater. So he usually lands up for dinner when the restaurant is just opening for the evening service and he’s finished and back home long before other diners stroll in.

Tina was due to deliver any moment and Akshay looked on top of the world. Like Salman’s films, Akshay’s big ticket winners this year, Housefull 2 and Rowdy Rathore, have paid obeisance to commerce and not to content. But that’s how Akshay likes it — money matters. Period. And in the present scheme of things, a repeat of the Tees Maar Khan debacle to blot his box office run is not welcome at all.

Akshay Kumar has ‘alien’ated himself from Farah Khan and Shirish Kunder; the film’s not called Joker, it’s a joke — all these are being cracked by those who’re watching the Tees Maar Khan partnership come apart. While it’s obvious that the story would’ve read differently if the team had come up with a box office winner, what’s emerging are the fierce familial loyalties that are forcing all the concerned parties to keep to their respective corners and grow further apart from one another.

Much like the time she marched out of Shah Rukh Khan’s world to stand by her husband, Farah Khan still roots for Shirish Kunder, irrespective of what the rest of the film world feels about him. “His time will come,” she prophesies.

Even if she is back in the Shah Rukh camp, Farah has her own compulsions and since she is blessed with a straight, clear vision (or blinkers, as some would say), she is definite that she will do whatever it takes to make a success of her marriage. She has her reasons, the chief one being that her brother Sajid Khan (director of Housefull, currently filming Himmatwala with Ajay Devgn in the lead) and she come from a broken home — they never really saw a happy mom and dad scene. It’s something Farah would never ever want her own triplets — Czar, Diya and Anya — to go through. “Besides, Shirish is a wonderful father. When I see him and Czar boxing or doing karate, it’s the most wonderful moment of my life,” she says. Motherhood has given her priorities — the children growing up in a normal family atmosphere being right up there as Priority No. 1. Everything else comes a distant second. She has even told me that if, strictly if, Shirish were to ever stray from the straight and narrow, “I would probably give it a lot more rope than other people would because frankly, it’s very important for the children. I would never put my children through what Sajid and I have gone through. Walking out would not be my first instinct or my second, third or fourth.”

You make your bed, you lie on it. Farah has made hers and she’s resilient enough to lie on it and face the world. With all the Joker and Shirish controversies and Shirin Farhad also tanking, Farah’s battling many fronts. But all she has to do is deliver a hit with Happy New Year, her next film with Shah Rukh Khan, and the same colleagues who’re predicting doomsday for her for sticking by her husband will be applauding her for making a go of her life.

Now that Shah Rukh has put up a nine-storeyed office and given Farah an entire floor as her work space, the only thing left to do is flag off the film. Who’ll ultimately bag the female lead in this five-man subject that includes Shah Rukh, Abhishek and Boman Irani? With SRK who’s trim as a teenager and not beefy from any angle, the girl who’ll bag the lead will have to be pencil slim too, which rules out rumoured choice Vidya Balan. Since she also has to be a Marathi-spouting local and bar dancer, Katrina can’t pull off the required gaunti (rural) act. An inside whisper has it that the only actress who’d fit the bill perfectly is Priyanka Chopra. Hush, that’s a name nobody is willing to put forward to Gauri Khan (who is one of the official producers of Happy New Year), not with all those whispers about SRK’s fondness for Ms Chopra. It’s a question of loyalties again.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal