Downtown : The Delhi-Mumbai Gazette

Between August 6 and 12, Lakme India Fashion Week is predicted to proceedsmoothly in Mumbai but without the presence of some top city designers a la Shahab Durazi,Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla and Hemant Trevedi. Clarifying his position, Sumeet Nair,executive director of the Fashion Design Council of India, which manages the event, says:"All designers in the country were invited. If some chose not to participate, it wastheir personal decision. I don’t think there is a larger picture." But Mumbaidesigners complain in public and in private that the national body greatly favours Delhidesigners (whom Anna Singh describes as "clannish"). Manish Malhotra, though,does not find anything wrong with that, putting into words what a lot of people in Mumbaidon’t want to hear. "Fashion is in Delhi. The market is there. In Mumbai peopleare casual. In Delhi they are dressy. And they have extreme climatic conditions whichbreed a good fashion market." Oh no, says Anna: "There is only politics inDelhi. Most of the major fashion events are in Mumbai. On what basis does the DesignCouncil decide who are the worthy designers to forecast trends in India?" But unlikelast year, designers are careful not to be too expressive. Delhi designer Rohit Bal sayshe doesn’t want to talk about it. Will that stop the others?

Feng Shui, some may point out, came about as a method of selecting burial sites inChina but over the centuries, it has moved away from being anything remotely morbid. Amongthe nervous, who flock to the Chinese art of correcting destiny, are falling stars ofBollywood. When Ajay Devgan lost about Rs 10 crore after the Raju Chacha tragedy,he approached author and Feng Shui master, Mohan Deep. "Money was leaving hishousehold for the last two years till his mother sent him to me. After my tips, he hasmade good money by distributing two films," Deep says. He is not the only‘master’ famous people are flocking to. Shekhar Suman, when Sony TV wasapparently tormenting him, approached a Feng Shui guru, "who gave all the wrongtips", according to his friend. But, a change of master later, things started lookingup and good. Karan Johar got Feng Shui done on the sets of his new film Kabhi KhushiKabhi Gam. Amitabh Bachchan is another confirmed disciple. And, as Bollywoodgrapevine goes, a popular hero’s wife has approached a Feng Shui guru to "stopthe man from sleeping around".

The summit may have failed but those at Jaypee Hotel have still not forgotten theexperience of hosting the leaders and their entourage. PM A.B. Vajpayee, who stayed in arelatively simpler suite, bereft of the hype and hoopla of the Amar Vilas Taj view, wassatisfied with the hospitality and was confident that talks will continue. The optimism isevident in the note he wrote after the talks had failed. "I’m confident and Isincerely pray that the Agra Summit will ultimately prove to be a useful milestone alongthe high road to peace...," wrote Vajpayee. Musharraf, who penned his note while thetalks were still on, wrote: "History is in the making in this hotel." Thesmartest one came from home minister L.K. Advani, who avoided mention of India andPakistan and concentrated on the hospitality and the food. "The food was deliciousand the service impeccable," he wrote. And there was no dispute on that.

B.B. Huria has been preparing crossword puzzles by the dozen every day. Now helaunches his portal myxword.com where you have a crossword on everything, foranyone. "I have crosswords on politics, economy, engineering, medicine, architecture,sports, including those on kbc and Jeeto Chappar Phad Ke," says Huria, whoseportal records more than 30,000 hits a day and is being linked with the country’sschools and colleges. His revenue model? Well, Huria, who’s helped by his mbadaughter to update and add new puzzles everyday, just isn’t interested. Why?"Crossword is all about education and that can’t be priced." Pricelesslogic.

So you thought that mythologicals were a speciality of the idiot box. Tune in toradio. WorldSpace, the world leader in satellite radio that is slowly trying to build up alistenership in urban India, recently aired the Mahabharata on its literary channel. TheWorldSpace Letters Channel broadcast the Mahabharata in English over a span of 13 hoursvia both its satellites—AfriStar as well as AsiaStar—making it the first timeever when the complete, uninterrupted Mahabharata (all of 1,00,000 stanzas and 107stories) was presented to an international radio audience. The Letters Channel version ofMahabharata was based on the 1951 translation by well-known statesman and first Indiangovernor-general C. Rajagopalachari. "Though the Mahabharata comes from India, itsgreat message speaks to all of us. We created our satellite radio infrastructure so peopleof all lands could share the riches of their culture with the world," says NoahSamara, chairman and ceo of WorldSpace Corporation. Next on the menu are more suchclassics from Africa, Arabia, East Asia and Latin America.

If it eventually happens, this could be a landmark for the Indian entertainmentindustry. His stint as Enron India ceo done, Sanjay Bhatnagar now plans to power his wayinto the entertainment business. And his coup would be pop music giant Quincy Jones’possible association with Bollywood.

Bhatnagar, who resigned last year from Enron (following his shift to Singapore), hasset up venture fund company ThotCapital Group, and is close to finalising a host of plans,both in India and for nris worldwide. Initial discussions about the project wereformalised at Davos where Bhatnagar met Jones during the last World Economic Forum. Jones,credited for shaping the career of the legendary Michael Jackson, is said to have evincedinterest for both music videos and scoring music for Indian movies shot in internationallocales. "Experimenting with Broadway theatre, Jones is also keen to replicate suchpossibilities in Indian cities through a joint venture," says a company official.

Analysts say ThotCapital’s idea makes sense. A large number of filmmakers ofIndian-origin (like Manoj Night Shyamalan and Tarsem Singh) have been, of late, makingfilms in Hollywood. Then, a host of Western filmmakers are producing films based onOriental themes; also, domestic filmmakers from both Mumbai and southern states areincreasingly travelling abroad to shoot their films due to whopping discounts offered byvarious governments. ThotCapital is also contemplating producing for domestic channelsIndianised versions of globally popular gameshows in collaboration with internationalchannels (like cbs of the US). Whew! is all we can say.