Dabas with co-stars Vasundhara Das and Neha Dubey at the party

Praveen Nair with Naseeruddin Shah, one of the lead players in the film

Did it make you laugh and cry?" Mira Nair asked fans at the Monsoon Wedding premiere party in Delhi last week. As they nodded, she chirped happily, "Good, that's all I wanted." Actually, she got much more when she unveiled the film at the city's Priya Cinema. A Golden Lion at Venice is no small change, so Delhi spent the week salaaming Nair. Minutes before the screening, crowds gathered outside to gawk at actor Parvin Dabas playing pretend groom on a horse surrounded by pretend baraatis (read: the rest of the cast).

"Guests" in brocades and silks danced to a band on a path usually populated by kids in designer casuals. The Salaam Baalak Trust for street children-founded after Nair's Salaam Bombay-put up its annual play the next day ("the timing was a pleasant coincidence," says the filmmaker's mom, trust chairperson Praveen Nair). And India Habitat Centre topped off a Nair film fest by scheduling an interaction with the director. Now did we miss out something?

-Anna M.M. Vetticad

Matrimonial Fad

D'Souza (third from right) with Wadia, other top finalists and actor Jackie Shroff

The teaser ads about missing women last spotted at Bombay Dyeing showrooms could have passed off as the promos for yet another Gladrags model hunt. Except that in this case the women had the determining prefix, Mrs, before their names and were competing in the finals of the Gladrags Mrs India 2001 held at the Turf Club, Mumbai. It was the heart-felt comment by Maureen Wadia, managing editor, Gladrags ("marriage brings out the essence of every woman and gives women the confidence and maturity to become potent beauties") that impressed the 18 contenders to do their best in the song and dance and Q&A routines. The winner, 25-year-old green-eyed model Jasmine D'Souza, heading for Mrs World in Las Vegas, has been through the grind before-she was Miss Navy Queen in 1997. Has anyone suggested a Ms India contest?

-Natasha Israni

Going Dutch

Rembrandt's The Night Watch (below); Husain's version

Rembrandt's The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq done in 1642, is more famous by its late 18th century sobriquet, The Night Watch. Which is actually wrong because the painting depicts daytime (as revealed by its cleaning in 1946) ... but it would be ridiculously pedantic to now change it to The Day Watch. The other advantage: its dark, ponderous colours impressed M. F. Husain so much that he has made his own version called The Knight Watch 2001.

It only took Husain a few hours and visitors were invited to witness the dying moments of its completion at Delhi's Vadehra Gallery. In the canvas, earth colours freeze a group of 12 men in regimentals, a bison charges from the mountains above and a nude stands with a child in her arms-metaphors of crisis and conflict.

The Dutchman's painting was famous for being as much abused as it was praised. Husain, his confidence increasing, doesn't look as if he is concerned about either.

-Anshul Avijit