Eyecatchers

"Ms Shankar is the only sitarist in the world," says her publicist, "to be trained completely by Ravi Shankar." That's easy, she's his daughter. The real test for Anoushka Shankar comes this October, when her first album is out. It's tentatively titled Anoushka, and it has the pretty 17-year-old going solo on the sitar. "Anoushka could play on the banjo, and it wouldn't matter," says ex-Beatle George Harrison. "She is the music." And he is father's friend.

Debut at five, return at 18, when will the fame come? As a toddler, Vijay Yesudas, son of playback veteran K.J. Yesudas, lent his voice to a devotional cassette. Last week he stepped back into the world of professional music with an Onam album, Thiruvonakkaineettam. The genes are right, so is the attitude: he's studying music at the University of Miami. "Vijay (extreme right) has talent but will have to work hard to come up," remarks his proud-yet-not-preening papa. Junior, we can see, agrees.

Imagine your favourite uncle missing your wedding, or your best friend not making it on time. Faiz and Taskeen Basheer didn't want that. As they exchanged vows in a Bangalore restaurant last week, the ceremony was being webcast "live" on the Internet by Software Solutions (SS), a Bangalore firm. "This is India's first online wedding," claims Kailash Gupta of SS. "We were doing it as an experiment but were glad to know that friends and relatives from Delhi to Britain watched it, as it was updated every 25 seconds on the screen." Wonder what the vows were. In sickness and in health, in reality and virtually ...

James Cameron took years to make Titanic, then won a few Oscars and yelled, "I'm the king of the world." Really? In just a month, producer Ratan Lahkar of the Kahinoor Theatre Company has an Assamese stage version up and running. Check them out:

Leo DiCaprio as Jack, Kate Winslet as Rose, Gloria Stewart as the older Rose.	THE CAST	Kuntul Goswami is Jack, Nikumani Baruah is Rose Jr, with a mask also Rose Sr
Cost $200 million, used a 775 ft model, filmed in 17 m gallons of Mexican sea water.	THE SIZE	Cost a few lakh, uses three models (the biggest: 20 ft by 7 ft) , can be staged anywhere
Grossed close to $2 billion worldwide; 25 weeks gone and still running in India	THE RESULT	With 2,000 people a show, is a full-fledged hit; ends after 31 weeks in April '99.
The winner is...Lakhar. Could Cameron recreate a maritime disaster without water?