EXPRESSED DIFFERENCES

Some time back, perhaps a month ago, it was reported that a film based on the life and career of cricketer Shoaib Akhtar titled Rawalpindi Express will be made, for which singer Umair Jaswal has been roped in to essay his role. The report was greeted with a great deal of excitement. Now news is that Umair J has pulled out of the project due to ‘creative and personal’ reasons. It’s sad to note that Rawalpindi Express has halted, hopefully until it gets a new actor to drive it.

BAND OF BROTHERS

All fans of pop band Noori, well most of them we think, felt happy last week when the band announced through an Instagram post that… it’s back. Ali Noor put up a picture with his younger sibling Ali Hamza, captioning it in the following words, “Yes Noori is back... Thank you, Mobeen Ansari, for this photo.” In the picture the brothers can be seen enjoying a moment and having a good laugh. Now that Ali N seems to be in the clear in terms of accusations that were hurled at him in the recent past, we look forward to the band’s unblemished music.

FAMILY TIES

To fall in love is beautiful. But when young people fall in love, the world seems worth living in. Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana is going out with Agastya Nanda, the grandson of Amitabh Bachchan (son of his daughter). It all began because of working together in the upcoming Zoya Akhtar film The Archies — the director’s take on the Archie comics. We feel the two make a good royal couple, because the girl is the daughter of the Badshah of Bollywood and the boy is the grandson of the Shehenshah of Indian films.

POSTER PREDICAMENT

Hindu extremist groups in India are going bananas. First it was the brouhaha about the colour of the dress that Deepika Padukone is wearing in a song sequence of the film Pathaan, starring her and Shah Rukh Khan. But just when it seemed that was fading away, came the report that a group of bigoted men had vandalised posters of the movie, shouting threatening slogans against SRK and the rest of the crew of the film. Perhaps, they want the film to be renamed Phata Poster Nikla Hero?

O HIKING

One of the world’s most influential women, Oprah Winfrey, has a new passion: hiking. Last week, she uploaded a video on Instagram, of her going for a hike in Kauai, an island in Hawaii, with her best friend Gayle King. In a message she talked about a knee surgery that she had had in 2021 and according to Gayle K, “She has new knees and she’s killing it.” To be honest, Oprah W is known for her talks, not walks. But it’s also true that she’s hardly ever put a foot wrong.

CATTY CATCH

Pop star Taylor Swift doesn’t just earn from her albums and concerts; she makes millions of dollars through her pet cat named Olivia Benson (or it’s the other way round). A list of the richest cats in the world has been released, on which Olivia B has come third, with a net worth of 97 million dollars. The earning is a result of using the data from Instagram and perusing the accounts of pets and their owners to know how much wealth they’ve accumulated. Wow! Olivia B has the best of both worlds. A whopping share of Taylor S’s net worth and she doesn’t even have to put up with catty songs about her relationship to the singer.

Published in Dawn, ICON, January 15th, 2023