Eyecatchers

India Today, July 5, 1999
July 5, 1999

Hello India!

It was a quiet affair. Model India Hicks, Lord Mountbatten's granddaughter, was in India recently on a vacation cum photo shoot for a Hello magazine feature that was coordinated by Verve. She and her companion David Flint Wood visited various heritage buildings including Jodhpur's Umaid Bhavan where she spent the night at an "astonishingly large" suite. "It gave me a small insight into the privileged life my mother and grandparents must have led in India," she notes. Hmm. At last she knows.

Padma Lakshmi Model Meals

A model writes a book on how to eat well. Huh? Well, Padma Lakshmi is not one of your anorexic waifs surviving on birdseed. She's been featured in Vogue, she's modelled for Valentino, Armani and Moschino among others, but she'll never say no to a piping hot dosa. Now the Chennai-born, US-based girl has served up a book entitled Easy Exotic: A Model's Low-Fat Recipes from Around the World. "I think food and cooking are the basic elements of life," she chirps. Her colleagues on the ramp may disagree.

Yashodan Rana and Gayathri Shastri But Really ...

On screen they play god. In life, human ties take over. Yashodhan Rana and Gayatri Shastri, Shiva and Parvati in the DD serial Om Namah Shivay, translated their celluloid romance into reality by getting engaged recently. It's not a publicity stunt. "We were not thinking about whether the serial would have higher TRPs (television rating points)," says Rana, "but I can tell you the TRPs of our hearts was shooting up." What do we say? Congratulations? Or soubhagyawan soubhagyawati bhawa?

Azim Hasham Premji Money Talks

Just leave the man alone. He does not want publicity. The phones haven't stopped ringing at Wipro's Bangalore office since CEO Azim Hasham Premji, 53, was featured in Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people. His $2.8 billion (Rs 12,040 crore) personal fortune may not be a patch on Bill Gates' $90 billion, but as the world's richest Indian he pipped Lakshmi Mittal to the post. No comments from Premji. "He is a man of few words and great vision," says Wipro Vice-Chairman Ashok Soota. Well, his money's doing the talking pretty well.

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