Rani’s celebrating because she and Preity won Rs 50 lakh on the Holi special of KBC. The clincher came with the half-a-crore question. Who was not born on August 15? While Rani was all for Raakhee Gulzar, Preity rooted for Napoleon. The duo agreed they needed to phone a friend. The friend was Javed Akhtar. Their time was up before Akhtar could come up with an answer. The actors decided to rely on their heart. “Since we both like Salman (Khan) we decided to go with Salman Rushdie. We were right!” Rani chortles. Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947!

Naseer mila re

It’s not easy getting the nod from Naseeruddin Shah. That’s why Joy Ganguly is happy to have snagged the actor for his third film. Joy who, you could well ask. He wrote and produced Bong Connection, the Benglish film starring Shayan Munshi and wife Pia along with Raima Sen, that elicited interest at IFFI. Joy has almost wrapped up his second, more “national” Hindi feature, Via Darjeeling. Come March and he will move on to his third project, BBD or Binoy, Badal And Dinesh.

A friend in deed

Last week Rani Mukherji had taken time off from Sanjay Leela Bhansali to oblige good friend Shah Rukh Khan. She was shooting a special episode of KBC3 with Preity Zinta. Though the actor had promised Sanjay that she would be on the Saawariya set by 1.30 p.m. the shoot was delayed by a couple of hours and Rani drove up to the studio only around 3.30 p.m. She was not alone. Accompanying her was Preity...and Shah Rukh himself. Always the gentleman, her Khan dost came along to apologise to his Devdas director for holding up the shoot. And he came bearing a gift too. A well-loaded hamper delivered with oodles of charm. That’s SRK!