Beauty glow

Okay, Subhash Chandra is not quite an Adonis. But the chairman of Zee group has been looking rather dapper these days. At a convention in Mumbai some days ago, his glowing skin sparked some speculation. A top Zee official admits that the boss spends considerable time in beauty parlours (his hair has to be dyed just so ? a small white wave, a la Indira Gandhi, in a sea of black). But the reason behind the peaches-and-cream complexion, he holds, is bipasana. Chandra is devoted to this form of yogic exercise and meditation, for which he makes himself unavailable to the world at large for about 10 days in a year when he goes into a bipasana retreat. Bipasana or botox, the man is looking rather pleased with himself. And there is good reason for that. Business is doing well ? Zee TV is the number two entertainment channel ? and the man himself ranks 746 in the Forbes Billionaires’ list. Success, clearly, is a good skin toner.

Serving it hot

Like Suneil Shetty and Dino Morea, Malyalam movie megastar Mohanlal believes that food and entertainment go hand in hand. So the actor has gone and opened a sea-food restaurant in Bangalore. Mohanlal ? who already runs a restaurant in Dubai, called Mohanlal’s Tastebuds ? is wooing the Indian foodie for the first time. With its coastal cuisine, the Bangalore restaurant will be an extension of God’s Own Country. The chefs come from Kerala and the fare from Mohanlal’s marine export business. “Serving food is an art. That’s why we are in the business,” the actor says. He may have a point there about the link between acting and eating ? after all, ham does have two meanings.

Right equations

When British writer-actor Stephen Fry and our own Dev Benegal come together, you’d expect something out of the ordinary. And rightly so, for the duo plans to make an Indian version of Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind ? a film on the Indian mathematician Srinivasan Ramanujan. “When I first proposed the film, people thought I was mad since no one could conceive of a film made on the life of a mathematician,” he says. Benegal says he was greatly enthused when he heard that Fry was also pondering a film on Ramanujan. “I met Stephen six months ago at a conference in France and was moved when he proposed collaboration on the film,” he says. To be shot in both India and England, the film will show his incredible journey from the villages of Erode and Kumbakonam to Cambridge University and his relationship with the mathematician T.S. Hardy. It promises to be a venture worth keeping an eye on ? if the equations work out, that is.

Four in One

You can call her a Jaya of all trades. Some can’t manage even one career, and there is Jayaprada ? juggling three with elan. And now, not content with being an actress, a dancer and a Member of Parliament, Jayaprada ? famously described by Satyajit Ray as the one with the most beautiful face ? is now going to produce a film. And she doesn’t just act in it, but plans to sing a song as well. The lady can launch a one-woman company.

 

Art of the matter

Artist Jatin Das is busy chasing a dream. And if all goes well, it will soon shape up on a one-acre plot the Orissa government has given him on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. Named after him, the J.D. Centre of Art will house just about everything the painter from Mayurbhanj calls his own ? paintings, books and antiquities. And, of course, some 5,000 pankhas (hand-held fans) he has collected from across the world and over the years. Das, who has been pushing for the centre for over eight years now, is a happy man. For the centre, conceived by the famous Ahmedabad-based architect B.V. Doshi, will be not just a home to traditional and contemporary art but to the artist himself. “I don’t have a house of my own. I live in a rented house in Delhi,” Das says.