The marriage was supposed to be a secret but in the end turned out to be a poorly kept one. After the gossip websites broke the news that the couple was going to Italy to marry, mainstream media also confirmed and some of them even sent their crew to cover it. In any case, the two are now happily married. And back in Mumbai a reception is planned later this week and it will be big bang one. The true spectacle of what a marriage between India’s leading cricket icon and an A-list Bollywood actress will be on show. It is going to be full of the luminaries who straddle both the cricketing and film worlds, the biggest obsessions of Indians and in the Virat-Anushka marriage which finds a perfect coming together.
An interesting tidbit is making the rounds on why they had resorted to the ‘secret’ marriage. Apparently, it was Yashraj Studios head Aditya Chopra and his wife Rani Mukherji who told the couple to go far away and do the nuptials to avoid the madness of what it would evoke in India. Aditya is manic about his privacy and his own marriage to Rani was also an ultra-private affair. Anushka was incidentally a Yashraj find and her career took off with movies produced by them. But it still begs the question as to what exactly has been avoided when the couple is anyway going to have a reception now, where the same frenzy will have to be undergone.
The two are also now all set to move into a new apartment in Mumbai which apparently cost a whopping Rs 34 crore. That might be more than most people’s imagination but will not really pinch either of their pockets. Anushka, who lives with her parents, will just need to move to the other side of town. But Virat will be changing cities, having to shift from Delhi where he is now based.
Amir Khan opts out of biopic on
first Indian going to outer space
We knew that Aamir Khan has decided to opt out of the biopic of Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian to go to outer space, but the reason was unclear. There might be some light on that, even if it is not confirmed yet. Apparently, Aamir is firm on not doing any movies from outside and will only be working in projects of his production house.
But that is not all. He has a big project lined up which will be a franchise of movies that will extend almost a decade. His decision to go entirely in-house might be a disappointment for all the many directors who would have been hoping of one day working with Aamir. Interestingly, the replacement for Aamir in the biopic is said to be Shah Rukh Khan, which means the movie will still be a pretty big one. But, of course, Aamir and Shah Rukh bring different treatments to a role. Aamir has just been tried, tested and passed superlatively with Dangal which was a biopic, Shah Rukh too has pulled off a very big hit, even if 10 years back, in Chak De! India, based on a former Indian women’s hockey team coach.
More on Zaira’s ‘harassment’
Zaira Wasim, the Aamir Khan discovery who was first seen in Dangal and then as the leading character in Secret Superstar, made news for a rather unsavory experience that she had. She was travelling from Delhi to Mumbai on a flight when the man sitting behind her started rubbing her with his legs after putting them on her armrest.
Zaira put up an Instagram post later where she spoke of trying to record the harassment but there wasn’t enough light to capture it. She did get a shot of his feet though. And then matter got escalated. The police got in touch with her and arrested the man. He was booked under a stringent provision used against child sex abusers because Zaira is only 17 and still a minor.
But there were also voices that questioned Zaira’s account. The person who was sitting next to the accused said that the man had only been sleeping with his leg on the armrest. The man’s wife also said that there was no harassment and that her husband’s touch had been unintentional. Also, that he had even apologized to Zaira at the end of the flight and she had accepted it then. The airline staff too said that they hadn’t noticed anything amiss and when Zaira had raised the issue with them, they had asked her to make a formal complaint and her mother had decided not to do it.
Promoting Tiger Zinda Hai
Movie promotions can make for somewhat strange occasions. For example, Tiger Zinda Hai which stars Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, is going to be released later this month and so the stars are going to different events. One such was a book launch. Strangely, Sangeeta Bijlani, his former girlfriend was also there including Katrina that made two former girlfriends of Salman there. That was not the last of the ironies.
The book, written by a photographer and a former minister from the state of Rajasthan, was on the tigers of Ranthambore, a national park. Obviously, the decision to be part of the event was because Salman’s name is Tiger in the movie. However, what many found somewhat jarring was that Salman is facing court cases in Rajasthan for poaching wild animals. That he should now release a book on them didn’t seem in very good taste. On the other hand, the alleged offence did happen almost two decades ago and he might very well have changed his attitude to animals since then, along with his image makeover in recent times.
Meanwhile, Salman is also going to be launching his brother-in-law as a hero in a movie being made by his production company. No matter what critics think of him, he does place family and friends above all.
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