All's well

Guests and Manish Malhotra

He's always claimed to be a ‘good middle class Punjabi boy' (we'd pick quarrel with at least two of those five words), but high-profile designer Manish Malhotra has certainly upped the social ante, ever since he moved into his new home in Pali Hill.

Over the months he's hosted parties for visiting fashion icons like Donna Karan, Suzy Menkes and Fern Mallis, and the legion of Bollywood stars who have dropped in for casual evenings at his sumptuous pad are too many to recount. This weekend too, the maestro of Bollywood style threw open the doors of his hospitality and this time the crowd was just as glam: Jaya and Shweta Bachchan, Tina Ambani, Avanti and Yash Birla and Kajal Anand were a few of the invitees as this picture demonstrates.

What is interesting though, is that old timers will recall how almost two decades ago, things had not been as cordial between the glamorous Birla couple and the relatively newbie designer. Apparently it was when there had been intense discussions between the two parties about a collaborative venture, but the plans had come to naught. If insiders are to be believed, there had been a fair amount of heartburn over broken promises and unfulfilled plans.

But that was a long time ago of course, and much Chardonnay has flowed since then and Malhotra has become one of the country's designers du jour, having been once of the first of his ilk to mine the Bollywood - Fashion synergy. So as they say, all's well that ends well. Cheers!

The wine world's 007
It took lunch with Jean Charles Boisset, one of the world's most renowned wine icons, to remind us how much wine improves things and makes the world a nicer place. We were supposed to meet the celebrated president of the Boisset Family Estates, and The Boisset Collection, Burgundy's largest wine producer, along with Kapil Sekhri, for what was supposed to be a purposeful and solemn meeting of minds on a Monday afternoon.

Jean Charles Boisset

But what do you do when the guest of honour arrives half an hour late with two glamorous (and giggly) girls on his arms (a former beauty queen and a dentist), that he had met over the weekend, announcing that he's spent all morning in their company stroking cows outside city temples?

Dashing, articulate and a true citizen of the world, JCB, married to an heiress of the Gallo Family Vineyards, was sporting a self-designed jewelled brooch, and cuff links with a spangled jacket and shoes so sparkling, that they could outshine Marine Drive on a Sunday night (he's something of a fixture on San Francisco's Haute 100 list). The Burgundy-born, California residing, forty something inheritor of one of the industry's legendary wineries in France, who then had gone forth to conquer the New World, came across as one of the few free spirits left in the world of business left.

Unsurprisingly aided by some excellent grapes, the conversation veered from Bernard Arnault and Deepak Chopra, to Richard Branson and Vijay Mallya; to the stillness of the rock gardens of Kyoto; to interplanetary communication (the beauty queen said that she wanted to study this as a subject at Stanford) and the next paradigm for India's wine growers: Indian growths being served on the same table and along with wines from the New World and France. "Ultimately that's the way to go," said the man who had by his own example had erased the borders between the Old World and the New.

Same shame?
We have not really met musician Vishal Dadlani, though, he has on occasion been our 4 am Facebook buddy (don't ask). But that does not mean we do not as often happens with public personalities, carry on an internal dialogue with him and his pronouncements, most of which we seem to agree with.

Betsy DeVos, Smriti Irani and Vishal Dadlani

Which is why, his cryptic post ‘And now they've got their Smriti too. Uncanny,' on the inappropriateness of Betsy DeVos being nominated by Donald Trump to serve as his Secretary of Education, had us chuckling. As is known, Ms DeVos blotted her copybook recently, by allegedly lying to the Senate, and Dadlani was alluding to our own former HRD minister Smriti Irani's travails with the truth.

Of course, the sting in the tail of his comment came from the unstated fact that over the past few days the political narratives of both the USA and India were eerily (worryingly) alike. Same, same or shame, shame?

Making that all important call
We were the first to write about the raids on this high-profile diamond merchant, whose offices and retail outlets had been visited by the long arm of the law across the country over the past week (these have happened in conjunction with raids on his uncle, an equally successful member of his trade, belonging to the opposite end of the price spectrum.)

What had intrigued many was the fact that the high-profile upscale gent who had received many accolades and much recognition in the media, and had zipped past his contemporaries to reach the pinnacle of his profession in a relatively short span of time, was known to be very well connected with some of the country's most powerful personalities. How could he have not sought their counsel or support in his time of need?

This conundrum was explained when we ran into a fellow diamond jeweller. "This is not the time for him to make that all important phone call for help," said the young man. "At this stage of the raid, information is only being collected and collated. To be effective, a phone call needs to be made after information is collected and passed on to a completely different department for action. That's how it's usually done in this business," he said. Ahso.

Love in Tokyo!
Our friend Rashmi Uday Singh, the irrepressible food critic and unbridled jetsetter has been away, tasting exotic food in Japan over the past week or so.

Rashmi Udayâu00c2u0080u00c2u0088Singh

And though it is not uncommon for her to share her travels and food adventures with an update every nano second on social media, we came across this rather more memorable gem posted by Singh about her time in Kyoto, dressed rather fetchingly from head to toe in a traditional Japanese Kimono, on what looks like a traditional house boat.

And though we weren't able to get through to the intrepid traveller who is still away, we look forward to hearing about her latest adventures and in keeping with her sartorial flourish (she had once memorably worn an Arab hijab to a Mumbai reception), we do hope she brings the Kimono back!