The highlight of the evening was when the star shared little known facts about his journey, including the time when a director had declared ‘main patthar se acting karva sakta hun, par Shah Rukh say nahi’ and how he overcame his complex about his nose only after his first producer Hema Malini said, “Shah Rukh, I like your nose, and that’s why I am casting you in my Dil Aashna Hai.”

What struck the audience was SRK’s immense gratitude to his directors — Kundan Shah, Aziz Mirza, Hema Malini and Abbas Mastan, those who had stood by him in the early years. “He said when he’d arrived in Mumbai, he used to stay at their offices as he had no home of his own.” The book has photographs by Amole Kamble.

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Of Rumi and Daffodils
“My mother Anita Lal and I have known Rohit Bal for longer than we can remember. There has always been a strong mutual admiration between us.

Rohit Bal and Simran Lal

He is a real romantic and his passionate description of his homeland Kashmir over a wonderfully long lunch at our studio just got us dreaming,” says Simran Lal, about ‘Husn-e-Taairaat’, the limited edition home and apparel collaboration between the designer and the store to be launched over an evening of camaraderie and cocktails at the Mumbai store.

“We knew that we loved the same things, we knew that nuances of colour excited us, as did Rumi and Daffodils and the wonderful heritage of our country...” she says. Nice!

Evenings of wine and roses
This weekend a slew of glamorous personalities, including Jacqueline Fernandes, Vikas and Gayatri Oberoi and Pernia Qureshi, are expected to be found seated around an exquisitely bedecked table at the newly opened fine dining restaurant Masque, when architect du jour Ashiesh Shah along with others hosts a sit-down dinner.

Priscilla and Jacqueline Fernandes

“It’s a specially curated evening bringing together the best of food ambience and design,” says Shah, who has designed Masque, a high-ceilinged, post modern and industrial chic temple of minimalism in a converted mill area.

The dinner is to welcome Priscilla Incisa della Rocchetta, granddaughter of the man who created the iconic Sassicaia ‘Super Tuscan’ wine in 1940, which has put Bolgheri in Italy on the map. “Aditi and Prateek are curating a seven-course meal,” says Shah.

Incidentally, for those who like a bit of wine lore, the myth of Sassicaia’s celebrated original vines being sourced from Château Lafite-Rothschild, has been summarily dismissed by Priscilla’s dad as in fact “cuttings from 50-year-old vines from a friend’s estate near Pisa.”

Not in the stars
It’s not only political pundits pollsters and pen-pushers who have egg all over their faces for getting the US presidential elections so wrong. Astrologers who predicted a Clinton win are receiving their share of hoots too.

Pranay Gupte and Nagarajan

“Quite a few of my friends are recalling a prediction made earlier this year by my Chennai-based astrologer Guruji D Nagarajan, that Hillary Rodham Clinton would defeat Donald John Trump in the November 8 elections for the 45th President of the United States,” said our Dubai-based friend, writer Pranay Gupte, sportingly.

“I say to my friends that Guruji also predicted two other things:

(1) That I would be deeply delighted about the election outcome; and

(2) That I would meet a lovely, smart, sassy, wealthy and single woman in Dubai and become romantically involved,” he adds, tongue firmly in cheek.

“So, to those who look at stars and their interpreters for guidance, let me say that not one of Guruji's predictions has materialised. The election is over and I’m deeply depressed that Trump won. And the prediction about meeting the lovely woman? I'm going to have to wait and see. Surely, Guruji can't strike out three out of three!” he says. Stars crossed!

Artsy event
Her artsy, paint- and turpentine-filled ground-floor studio at Golf links, where we often dropped by for tea when we lived in Delhi, used to attract some of the Capital’s most celebrated art mavens, including Congress president Sonia Gandhi, with whom she had studied art conservation. And so next week, when well-known writer and conservator Rupika Chawla delivers an illustrated lecture on Ravi Varma’s visual storytelling at Pundole’s new salesroom at Hamilton House as a precursor to their Fine Art Sale, it’s sure to be well attended.

Rupika Chawla

Chawla, wife of one of India’s seniormost bureaucrats Navin Chawla, has authored many critically-acclaimed books on the artist. In fact, for the launch of her scholarly tome ‘Raja Ravi Varma: Painter Of Colonial India’ a few years ago at a prominent hotel in Mumbai, Chawla had requested us to read a few passages — and here’s the clincher — dress up like one of his subjects, a particularly challenging assignment, we thought. Mercifully, this time her request is far more doable. “Please come if you aren’t too busy,” she wrote. We will, dressed up like ourselves.