Bollywood boulevard

EVEN as you are reading this, Sushma Swaraj and her Bollywood battalion would have parked themselves on deck chairs at the French Riviera. T...

EVEN as you are reading this, Sushma Swaraj and her Bollywood battalion would have parked themselves on deck chairs at the French Riviera. To represent India at the Cannes Film Festival this week, the Information and Broadcasting Minister has picked a bunch of our leading filmmakers including Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Yash Johar, Smita Thackeray, Kumar Taurani and Karan Johar to accompany her and add a dash of glamour at the stall showcasing our Indian movies to the international film market.

For those who don’t remember, this won’t be Swaraj’s first visit to Cannes. Last year, she sat at an empty stall which boasted of nothing but posters of a bunch our masala potboilers. According to film-maker Shashilal Nair who was visiting the festival purely for educational purposes, Swaraj often spent idle evenings sipping non-alcoholic beverages by the beach. When he expressed his surprise at spotting her at a beach inhabited mostly by topless French mademoiselles, she promptly revealed that she had forbidden her daughter from leaving the hotel room and venturing onto the beach.

This time, however, she will have ample company in the 40-odd delegates she is travelling with. One can imagine Subhash Ghai gawking open-mouthed at the amply-endowed beauties in little red bikinis while Karan Johar invades every quaint little boutique to update himself on the latest fashions for his forthcoming designer romances.

The Kapoors — Randhir and Rajiv — will be there, picking up yet another honour in the name of their illustrious father. By day they will rustle up memories of dad, at the RK retrospective, and by night they will succumb to the the lure of the finest Scotch and a few legs of tandoori chicken.

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Sanjay Leela Bhansali will be there too — with the only film from our country that will arouse any interest — romanticising the struggle it was to bring Devdas to the screen again. His mother will be close by his side, as will Aishwarya Rai (probably minus Shah Rukh Khan because of his back injury), cheering him on as he reels from the heady taste of ‘‘international interest’’ and finally allows the audience a peep into his safely guarded secret.

How many deals will be struck, how many offers will be made, how much money will be exchanged? None of this can be predicted so early. What is certain though is the fact that our Bollywood Bunch will come back with enough stories to fill a dozen glossies for the next three months. It will be interesting to know what Smita Thackeray thought of Uma Thurman’s slinky black gown, and it will no doubt make fantastic reading to know what Yash Chopra has to say about Woody Allen’s latest film that premieres at the Festival.

I’m willing to bet that Ghai will come back with the memory of one stray movie-buff who approached him for an autograph at a fancy French restaurant, recognising him from all the Hitchcockian appearances he’s made in his films.