Kishore Singh: Her dil goes Dhoom ... too

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My daughter called her brother to complain that I had taken my wife to meet Shah Rukh Khan, but not asked her along. "You know he is my most favourite actor of all," she whined, which is not true at all because these days, like most women in the country, she is a little weak-kneed about Hrithik Roshan even though she will only admit that he is "all right".

Once we were at the hotel where Shah Rukh was to walk the ramp, she wouldn't stop calling every other minute. "Has he come yet?" she breathed heavily into the phone, "Have you seen him now?" "Well, what do you expect when you didn't take her with you?" said my son, standing up for his sister. "She should be thankful I didn't," I said, "because the whole evening was a disaster."

It all started off well enough. We were seated before the ramp for a Rohit Bal show and served royally by hotel waiters who kept an endless supply of canapés and wine circulating. However, it soon became evident that we were seeing rather more of the waiters and not at all of the clothes on Rohit Bal's models, and certainly not a scant sight of the Khan.

Over the better part of an hour gossip trickled in about why nothing at all was happening. "Shah Rukh isn't ready," said someone. "Rohit Bal hasn't come in for the fittings yet," said another who probably did know what was happening. Whatever the case, an announcement roused us from our seats and we were herded out to the gardens where we whiled away the better part of another hour before being allowed back in.

We'd been sitting for 15 minutes when a hotel staffer came over, sweating heavily, asking us to move elsewhere because he needed our seats.

"But these aren't reserved," I protested. No matter. "Someone senior in the hotel has asked that you move," he squeaked.

Not wanting to create a scene, we did move, as did another couple that was seated next to us, and because all the other seats were taken, we found ourselves in the last row with absolutely no view of the ramp at all. "Wow," exclaimed my son, "you mean you actually let someone throw you off your seats." "What I'm more embarrassed about," I explained to him, "is that when I saw a mousy couple occupy our front seats, I was so irritated (and perhaps it had to do something with the wine as well), I actually marched over and ticked him off for being a bully."

"What did he say?" asked my son. "He said he was a diplomat, and the hotel had promised him a good seat, and as the hoi-polloi I shouldn't mind sitting somewhere with no view." "Then what happened?" my daughter had joined the audience by now. "He complained to the hotel staff about my rudeness, and there was a great deal of bowing and scraping and apologising, which was quite entertaining because, of course, the fashion show had still to start."

Nor was that the end of the miserable evening. When it did finally start a full two hours late, the ramp lights failed right in the middle of it and the models had to walk in the dark. "But what about Shah Rukh Khan?" my daughter persisted. "He did make an appearance," I said, "and a lot of women screamed his name, but he made some jokes about Delhi girls (which your mother didn't like), and why men look at women's cleavages (which even I thought was in poor taste)." "No wonder," mused my daughter, "Hrithik Roshan is my most favourite actor of all."