Padma Lakshmi; (below) with Adam Dell in happier times

Excuse me, this is a trick question. What “boom” immediately went “bust”?

That’s Kaizad Gustad’s 2003 movie, but I am definitely not going to discuss Padma Lakshmi with you….

Is that because she has been sleeping with two men at the same time?

I am definitely not going to be drawn on that subject. In any case, we only have Adam Dell’s word on it.

Was she sleeping with him?

Yes, and also apparently with Teddy Forstmann at the same time, but these are deeply personal matters known only to a few million people.

But please, I want to improve my general knowledge. How else am I going to get into Presidency one day? Even Mother Superior can’t work out how Padma was sleeping with two men at the same time.

OMG, how did Mother Superior get in on the act? Please assure her “sleeping with two men at the same time” shouldn’t be taken too literally. It’s only a euphemism…

What’s a yuffomism? I could always google it and see.

In that case, Adam Dell’s brother could probably get your school a computer at a discount. He is Michael Dell. He is the billionaire who owns Dell Computers Inc.

How come Padma always sleeps with billionaires?

That’s because she’s a sensible girl. Adam is a wealthy venture capitalist. And it’s true Ted Forstmann, who is head of the IMG management group, is a billionaire. It’s a bit complicated, if you must know. She was sleeping with Adam who is a virile 41. But when Padma, who is blooming at 40, fell pregnant, Adam claims in his lawsuit she effectively told him, “I am pregnant but I don’t think this is all your fault. At least, I hope it isn’t. I hope the baby’s biological father is Ted because all the time you thought I was in an exclusive relationship with you, I was also getting to know him better. So the baby could be his — or yours. So why don’t you get lost?”

So who is the father?

Adam, of course.

How do you know?

Because even before Krishna was born — Krishna is the cute baby girl who will be one on February 20 — Adam had a DNA test done secretly and proved that he and not Ted was the father. Ted is 70 years old but terrifically sprightly, I am assured.

But not as sprightly as N.D. Tiwari, I bet. I think our swadeshi paramours are better.

You BJP or something? Ted is now her paramour. Someone explained to me that if you are a young woman marrying a very rich man, it makes sense to marry a very old man. In fact, the older the better.

Padma with daughter Krishna

But is Salman Rushdie very old? You told me Padma was married to him...

I didn’t, actually, but yes, he was married to Padma. He had been married thrice before, once to an American and twice to English ladies, but that was only net practice. He met Padma in 1999 at a party in New York. It had been thrown by a journalist called Tina Brown at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty to mark the birth of a magazine called Talk which has since gone out of business. Poor Salman was besotted. He was 24 years older but from the very beginning, he looked up to her.

Is that because he is 5ft 7 and she is 6ft tall in spikes?

I do believe your grasp of statistics is impressive. P.C. Mahalanobis would have been proud of you.

Who? I am saving up for a PC.

Oh, never mind. The fact is whenever Salman and Padma came to India she would deliberately wear very high heels whenever she posed for photographs standing next to him. He, for his part, was not at all happy when she left him — they were living in New York and London at the time — and went off alone to Bombay to make Boom the movie under Kaizad Gustad.

Surely, he should have been grateful to Kaizad for giving his girlfriend a break in Bollywood?

Not at all, because Kaizad certainly had a roving eye for pretty girls. He had once been excessively friendly with Diana Hayden. He had also brought a new girl from London. I am told Katrina Kaif is keeping the income-tax people busy these days. Anyway, Kaizad enraged Salman by putting it about that he was getting to know Padma rather better than Salman had ever done. This was an outrageous slur. I am sure Padma Parvati Lakshmi, to give the girl her full name, was as pure as, say, Shilpa Shetty. Salman immediately married her — Padma, I mean, not Shilpa — at a Monsoon Wedding in Manhattan. Salman had once been an advertising copywriter. He called his new wife “Three Goddesses in one” and enthused, “How can I pass this up, even if I am an atheist?”

Do you have a hanky? This is so moving. Did she also say, “I will love you for ever and ever?”

Of course. She wore a purple bridal sari in a backless choli for the photographers. But some say she took to heart a remark made by Sir James Goldsmith when his daughter, Jemima, then 21, broke her big news to him, “Daddy, you’ll never guess but I am marrying the famous Lothario Imran Khan. He is only 42.” He kissed Jemima gently on the forehead and murmured approvingly, “Darling, he will make an excellent first husband”.

Mother Superior told us that Sir James Goldsmith also said when he married his mistress that “when a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy”.

I would like to meet this Mother Superior of yours one day. Well, after three years of marriage, Padma, the heroine of our morality tale, was ready to move on to a new lover — in her case, two new lovers: Adam and Ted. In celebrity America, people whisper behind your back if you stay happily married for too long.

Right after prayers, Mother Superior told the assembly, “Say what you like about our fragrant lotus, but Padma is a role model for our Indian girls.”

I believe above her bed, she has framed words of wisdom from Mae West: “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.”