A few vignettes on a pleasant December morning: New bride Anushka Sharma looked as ecstatic as she felt and that's how she's always been. Unlike some who claim to be blasé and unaffected by the sighs and highs of stardom, Anushka has always been a normal girl ready to whoop with joy when something's going fantastically well.
So when she had that beautiful destination wedding in Tuscany, there was a swift flashback to the time she told me with uninhibited joy how getting a Schengen visa stamped on her passport was the ultimate high of her life then. She was off to Europe to shoot with Yash Chopra for, Jab Tak Hai Jaan. From that gleeful young girl, she morphed into a bride who wed luxuriously in Italy, many more Schengen visas on her passport telling their own story of her success.
It was the same when she got her break from Yash Raj, a dream debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan under Aditya Chopra's direction. As soon as Adi finalised her for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, she went out, got into her car and startled her driver with a high five. Never one to cloak her excitement with feigned composure.
Anushka has been like any successful working girl. Buying and doing up a spacious new apartment with her parents and brother was a big deal - a thrill she wasn't going to shrug off. She's a girl whose mother would scold her for bringing home fancy-looking toiletries, and then never use them. The daughter of an army officer and a Garhwali homemaker, Anushka typifies the middle-class girl who's gone places.
Indeed, the Anushka-Virat wedding has been like a fairy tale - she getting married in the same Schengen country as her mentor, Aditya Chopra. Italy was where Adi had chosen to wed Rani Mukerji,with a Hindu pundit in tow, three years ago.
Anushka's marriage set off the usual specious tweets that commented on "the pretty and talented actress' marriage" being "a loss to the film industry". What a redundant thought. With Kareena, Kajol, Vidya Balan and Aishwarya losing none of their stardom, the make-up or pack-up choice no longer exists. The suggestion is as irrelevant as asking Virat if he's going to give up playing cricket after marriage.
By the way, Virat is a perfect fit for Anushka. For all his on-field aggro and abuse (the latter, mercifully, a chapter he has successfully closed), Virat Kohli has her brand of simplicity. It is that which makes the India Captain touch the feet of Daljit Singh every time he plays at Mohali. Singh, former first-class cricketer and chairman of BCCI's grounds committee, is pitch curator at Mohali. Incidentally, he is also the father of actress Simone Singh.
The curious connection between cricket and cinema thus continues.
A different kind of vignette: At Shashi Kapoor's Wake (it wasn't the conventional chautha for sure), Krishna Raj Kapoor in trademark white, hair coiffed elegantly, telling me from her wheelchair, "Look at me. Is this called life? All of them have gone." Pointing to Shashi's handsome portrait, "He was a six or eight-year-old-boy when I got married. Is this the life I want?"
Krishna married Raj Kapoor in 1946 when Shashi was eight years old. She turns 87 this December.
Vignette 3: After the overkill that preceded Sultan and Tubelight, Salman Khan was subdued before Tiger Zinda Hai. His PR team made it clear to TV shows that specialise in pre-release interviews with the star cast that Salman-Katrina will not be promoting the film. Is it because they're super confident of bringing in a bumper audience without heavy-duty promotion? There's also the whisper that learning from the Padmavati experience, the team's not keen on amplifying Katrina Kaif's role as an ISI agent. Since the film has been made under the secretive YRF banner that's renowned for not showing their films to anybody until Friday, Tiger will benefit from underplaying it and playing it safe.
Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author
