What is it about Aishwarya Rai that makes men march willingly to their doom? It could be a wealthy but jobless software tycoon who turned, by all accounts, into a stalker. It could be an ageing bull with a history of showering his girlfriends with bruising affection. Or a freshly free rising star, whose ambition is greater than his ability, willing to commit media suicide in front of any TV camera willing to press the record button.

It could be that Rai, despite pushing 30, is regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world. It could be her talent which has taken her from the gawky girl of Mani Ratnam's Iruvar to the polished performer of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas. It could be her green gaze, the way she can stroke a man's hand, whispering into his ear, cooing "baby, baby, baby". Or it could just be the way she giggles-newly smitten 27-year-old Vivek Oberoi has said it is enough to make a man feel like a boy.

And then again, it could be that she's a real-life drama queen. Witness her landing in Mumbai, from her accident near Nashik while on the sets of Rajkumar Santoshi's Khakee. There she was on a stretcher, the sheet strategically placed to allow cameras to focus on her pale face, her hand, wrapped in a bandage, placed on her heart. And there was her hero, Oberoi, piercing through the crowd to be by her side. Add a moving soundtrack, and it could be a masala movie. Chicago's Roxie Hart couldn't have done better in her elusive search for celebrity.

ANGRY OLD FLAME SALMAN KHAN
	"Vivek Oberoi is a kid who has just discovered the joys of stardom. He'll learn with time." "So finally whose name got him the headlines? If my name can get someone so much publicity, then it must mean something."
NEW LEADING MAN VIVEK OBEROI
"He needs psychiatric help for his unacceptable behaviour, his alcoholism, his attitude to women and his warped machismo." "He's a sick man. One person died because of him. Tomorrow he could well hurt himself."
THE OTHER SUITORS
AKSHAYE KHANNA: Ranjeev Mulchandani, now a DJ and photographer, was her first true love. Akshaye Khanna, her reclusive co-star in Aa Ab Laut Chalen and Taal, was supposed to be seeing her. Or was it a pr stunt?
SABEER BHATIA: The software tycoon met her while both were co-judges at a beauty pageant. They apparently kept in touch as rumours swirled of an imminent alliance, which he has been denying ever since.

If this were Old Bollywood, Rai would have aged into a gracious, self-obsessed heroine, taking on young lovers and younger addictions. Khan would have drunk himself into abusive oblivion, surrounded by cronies. Oberoi would have gone on to a series of conquests, on film and off it, disappeared for two decades, only to surface as a pushy star dad. But this is New Age Bollywood, where star spats make it to the front pages of broadsheets and 24-hour TV needs a domestic melodrama to rival the war in Iraq.

Khan, who has rarely believed in speaking to the media, except occasionally to confirm his brutish reputation, has gone to London to shoot for Ravi Chopra's Baaghban. Oberoi, after inviting the media to camp in his living room so that he could broadcast live to the nation his angst at receiving 41 threatening calls in a single night, has switched off his cell phone. Rai is contemplating six weeks of enforced rest in a career that has already suffered Salmanitis.

Meanwhile, the extras are having a field day. Arbaaz, Khan's younger brother, has called Oberoi's press conference an elaborate publicity stunt, and said Rai still talks to Khan and discusses scenes from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (the 1999 Bhansali film that sparked off their affair). "Salman had these insecurities, Vivek's having them now,'' says Arbaaz, looking the picture of coiled aggression. "I can understand Vivek's frustrations. She never admitted to a four-year affair with Salman, how is she going to admit to a four-month affair with him?''

Having split with Khan over a year ago, the public announcement of which apparently drove him into a hit-and-run accident that cost one person his life, Rai has maintained a stoic silence. If there was anything between her and Oberoi on the sets of Sameer Karnik's Kyun? Ho Gaya Na ..., she made sure it never made more than rumour status, despite her alleged "good friend'' gifting her a Boxer puppy called Sunshine. That she acted in a Coca-Cola ad with him, which was shot in January but broadcast last week, is also being discounted by all except the most inveterate trivia collectors who will watch it for telltale signs of a blossoming romance.

STAR PAIR: Rai and Oberoi in the new Coca-Cola ad; in Sameer Karnik's Kyun?...

Khan has never done anything to endear himself to anyone, certainly not the media, unlike his contemporaries, the ever-proper Aamir Khan and the verbal speedmeister Shah Rukh Khan. Add to it his misdemeanours: killing blackbucks in 1998 and the accident in Mumbai last year. And then there are the urban legends: that he has roughed up Abhishek Bachchan and Ranvir Raj, Rishi Kapoor's son, and abused Shah Rukh. There's also the petition filed by Nikhil Wagle, editor of Mumbai tabloid Mahanagar, which demands he be provided psychiatric treatment.

Yet all three are likely to land on their feet after the scandal. What will remain in question will be the actual incident. There will be Oberoi's aggrieved version. Then there will be Arbaaz's. Yes, Khan did call Oberoi up that night, but only to ask whether he was seeing Rai. Yes, it turned into an argument with Oberoi being equally abusive and threatening to beat up Khan. He later called Arbaaz and said he was indeed having an affair with the actress and that he hoped to marry her.

The industry, for one, isn't amused by Oberoi's behaviour, which, says Abhishek Bachchan, breaks the industry's cardinal rule: "You settle all disputes internally." Concurs Sunil Shetty: "What Vivek has done betrays immaturity." Will Oberoi's live shtick begin a new era of washing dirty Calvin Kleins in public? In these tabloid times, everything is possible.