You heard it here first

Deepika Padukone

If our sources are to be believed, hunky, retrosexual, deep sea-diving filmmaker Homi Adajania (!) has signed Deepika Padukone and Varun Dhawan to play the protagonists of his next project, a Bollywood adaptation of the world-famous book, 'The Fault In Our Stars'.

As media watchers know, there has been much speculation on who would be cast in the Indian adaptation of the book by John Green, that went on to become a cult and popular teen classic, (known as the 'Love Story' of Gen X).

Homi Adajania and Deepika Padukone

With Padukone fresh from her success with 'Finding Fanny' teaming up for the first time with teen heart-throb Varun Dhawan, Adajania might just have pulled off a casting coup of sorts.

Varun Dhawan and John Green. PIC/AFP

Though, of course, given chronological exigencies, Bollywood writers might have to recast the couple in their mid-twenties for the Bolly film, as opposed to the original 16-year-olds!

Competitive static
So Modi has put an end to that building block of political patronage and entitlement - the PM's press junket. And in the absence of this ‘boys at the back of the bus' syndrome, there have been some piquant exchanges between those dispatched on commercial airlines to cover Modi's epochal USA sojourn.

Barkha Dutt and Suhasini Haidar

"Leaving for The Republic of New York tonight - beloved city of childhood and college. But suspect there won't be a moment off from work :(((. And no, I am NOT going to Times Square," posted NDTV's star anchor, Barkha Dutt on Thursday evening. This was met with a flurry of salutations and homilies, which reflected the highly competitive Universe of TV journalism.

"‘Cos Arnab's ego has laid siege to Times Square surely:))))," said one.

"Times Square has apparently been renamed Times Now Squared," said another.

To her credit, Ms Dutt responded to these barbs with a polite smiley.

It took CNN-IBN's ever cool and urbane Suhasini Haidar to restore a semblance of civility into the static of colliding egos and competing TRPs with her breezy, "See you on the flight!"

But it's going to be a clash of titans, this trip, and no, we're not referring to Indo-US relations.

Every Mumbai/ Delhi girl
Having cut our teeth on Mad Magazine, and then graduated to Private Eye and Spy, there is nothing we like better than satire and parody.

Every Delhi Girl. PIC/YouTube

Which is why, we are so thrilled by the latest offering from the guys who gave us, ‘Every Delhi Girl in the world'. Called ‘Every Bombay Girl', the clip parodies the party hearty, retail therapy, Page Three-reading, Goa-going precious and pretentious Bombay princess, much like its prequel sent up their Delhi cousins.

Just one complaint: the Bombay girl is made to appear far more sophisticated (and prettier) than her Dilli counterpart.

Shome mistake shorley?

The morning after
No one said morning afters are easy. Especially not morning afters that follow on the heels of a weekend of laughter, love and celebration. And none have learnt this better than our friend, the glamorous Delhi-based TV maven Ravina Raj Kohli whose coming of age was brought in with a cruise-liner of a party in Bangalore, which saw friends fly in from various corners of the world and which was reported on these pages last week.

Ravina Raj Kohli with Farah Khan

The rumblings began after the guests had flown home. "After I posted some pictures of the party, I began to sense a bit of negativity and needless jealousy and bitching from a few people," says Kohli, ever the diplomat, choosing her words with care. "Many of them were those who hadn't been invited. I began to ask myself why I needed that in my life," she says feistily. "After all, that's what turning fifty does.

Removes the need to be ‘nice and polite' for the sake of it -Na?" she said. "So I went through my FB friends' list and began to question whether half the people on it were really my friends," she says. The result? A politely worded post that said, "Cleaning my friend list. Some of you may fall off by mistake...so pls call me if it happens... The word Friend for me doesn't mean nosey, opportunistic, disloyal and envious. So long."

Kohli's spiting words had some expected, but also a few surprising results. After subsequent posts, which saw her flexing more muscle, the final denouement was: ‘I love the way the fake-oos fell off the list on their own! Too good!'

"I couldn't believe it, but the guilty ones un-friended themselves," she guffawed, "to save themselves the awkwardness of me dropping them!" And for the record, the caption she posted along with this ‘tigress' picture was: ‘Don't mess with me... ever.'

Don't you know who I am?
So word comes in of an incident involving a Bolly brat-packer at a midtown high-rise nightclub over the weekend. Seated at an exclusive table with his gang, all seemed to be going well until the cub decided to light a cigarette, assuming his ‘star' quotient would bend rules.

However, he was in for a shock when no sooner had he taken his first puff than he was intercepted by two brawny bouncers who snatched the cigarette from his lips and disposed it off in full view of all. The star, visibly embarrassed, resorted to the usual ‘don't you know who I am', but when that attracted more attention, quickly backtracked and apologised.

After all, only the Badshah of Bollywood is allowed to light up in style.