It was touted as the marriage of the millennium in Bollywood, but the sharp divide among the guest list following the Bachchan-Kapoor break up, took away some of the sheen of an otherwise grand RK show.

She was the first girl from the Bollywood’s Kapoor Khandaan to foray into films. She started off as a ‘sexy doll’, graduated to roles of substance and soon was acknowledged for her histrionics. Films with Shyam Benegal and Khalid Mohammed took Karishma Kapoor to zeniths of achievements that any actress could only dream off. And then came the nadir. In a jiffy, her much-hyped romance with actor Abhishek Bachchan moved towards an engagement and broke-off. Filial discord was slated to be the reason. And all of a sudden Karishma was left with nothing but a television serial ‘Karishma’ that too got embroiled in an inter-continental dispute over copyright.

It was at this juncture that happiness came flooding into Karishma’s life in the form of childhood friend Sunjay Kapur, a Delhi businessman. Out of the blue came the announcement of their wedding and the first family of Bollywood was smiling again. Preparations began in full swing, though Bollywood was virtually split down the middle over the marriage – friends of the Bachchans to the right and friends of the Kapoors to the left! However, when the day dawned at the Deonar residence of the Kapoor clan on Sept. 29 there were no tensions of a broken engagement as the entire Kapoor family, clad in crispy white kurta-pajama turned out to welcome the guests. Granduncle Shashi Kapoor stood at the helm (another grand uncle Shammi happened to be in hospital), while uncles Rishi and Rajeev Kapoor went about welcoming the guests.

The signatories included Central Ministers and former actors Vinod Khanna and Shatrugh an Sinha, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Chaggan Bhujbal, co-stars Govinda, Salman Khan, Vivek Oberoi and Akshaye Khanna, industrialist Rahul Bajaj, lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani, besides former cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin and his star wife Sangeeta Bijlani.

The wedding, replete with Sikh rites, was kept away from media glare as per the wishes of the bride, though she came out with her husband and star sister Kareena to wave to the crowds of shutterbugs standing outside. Though the Kapoors had announced that the event would be a private affair, the vehicular traffic outside the RK bungalow in Chembur (Mumbai) ground to a halt for close to three hours.

The 126-course meal was specially prepared by the cooks from the Sun n’ Sand restaurant and the happy couple later took a flight to Europe for an elaborate honeymoon that included a cruise on the Mediterranean. In all it was an event to remember for all of Bollywood though reports indicated that many guests did not make for fear of antagonizing the Bachchan household.

Some of the notable absentees included industrialists Anil Ambani of Reliance and Subrata Roy of the Sahara Group, politician Amar Singh, Rishi Kapoor’s daughter Ridhima (who is close to Bachchan’s daughter Shweta), superstar Shah Rukh Khan, Sonali Bendre and her husband producer Goldie Behl and hotshot director Karan Johar.

The Talaq Season?

They are the thickest of friends in Bollywood, so it must come as no surprise that Messrs. Sunjay Dutt, Sanjay Gupta and Mahesh Manjrekar are bidding a final adieu to their wives almost simultaneously. The threesome, who worked together in Kaante, seems to have fallen on bad days over the past one year. First Gupta filed for divorce from his wife and now we hear Manjrekar is following suit. Now there is talk that the ‘deadly Dutt’ who has gone through several failed romances, is walking out on Rhea Pillai, though some say it is the other way round – thanks largely to Dutt’s philandering ways with starlets like Sameera Reddy and Kim Sharma.

Sobering Sex Symbols

Bollywood’s dare-bare dames are sobering down at a pace that could make their fans really worried. If seniors like Karishma Kapoor and Raveena Tandon suddenly decided to discard their oomph and turn serious with award-winning roles after a few years, their successors like Bipasha Basu and the smooching star Mallika Shehrawat seem to be even quicker. Bipasha, who introduced the new age bold heroine with movies like Ajnabi (on wife swapping) and Jism, feels the newcomers are taking a step further than she did. On her part, Mallika feels, now that she is the talk of the town for the record number of smooches she managed in her maiden film Khwaish, good roles will come her way. Even if it doesn’t, Mallika is not keen on titillating her fans with more body show.