Birthday Special: Uss raat jab kuch gunde shilpa shetty ke peeche lage the siri fort se holiday inn tak......BY ALI PETER JOHN

It was an awards function organised by the Punjabi Kala Sangam in New Delhi. The stars from Bombay kept flying down to the capital and by the time it was 4 pm , the Holiday Inn Hotel was crowded with stars like Madhuri Dixit Salman Khan, Anupam Kher, Kader Khan and directors like David Dhawan, Raj Kanwar and other known directors, producers, composers, lyricists and technicians .

I must mention here that the entire awards function was the brain child of one of the friends ( Rajendra Handa )and one of the most powerful and popular star secretaries of the time, Rakesh Nath, better known as Rikku and best known as the manager of Madhuri Dixit. The awards ceremony was to be held at the Siri Fort Auditorium and Union Minister Salman Khursheed was to be the chief guest. I can say it now that the awards were strictly not given according to merit, but by who from Bombay could find time off to attend the function in Delhi.

There was a special award to be given to the best newcomer in the female category and it was decided to give it to Divya Bharati. At 3 pm someone from Divya's house called Rikku to inform him that Divya would not be able to make it to the function m. Rikku was the kind of man who never took 'no' for an answer and immediately called Shilpa Shetty who had shot to popularity after her appearance in Baazigar and by 5 pm Shilpa and her mother, Mrs Sunanda Shetty was in the lobby of the Holiday Inn and within no time she was ready to leave with the other award winners and was excited about winning her first ever award.

The Siri Fort Auditorium was packed with people like ants caught in a tin. The atmosphere was like that at a kabbadi match and the only ones who could find places in the auditorium were the popular faces from Bombay and Shilpa and her mother were still not popular. She however received a trophy which had the name of Divya Bharati on it. I too was to receive an award and had to literally push and punch people around to reach the Minister to collect my award and then ran out of Siri Fort to save my life.

I had only seen Shilpa once and was surprised to see an award winner being stranded in the midst of an hostile crowd of young hooligans. I joined Shilpa and her mother to look for someone from the side of the organisers to get us some vehicles which could take us back to our hotel.

The organisers sent us an old and battered van and we were pushed into it with me being flanked by Shilpa and Mrs Sunanda Shetty.....

And hardly had we .started breathing normally, I saw four motor cycles with three or four young men on each of the motor cycles. They were rowdies who were even drunk and they kept chasing our van. It was only a little later that Mrs Shetty realised that they were forcing us hand over Shilpa to them. The chase began to become more and more scary when the rowdies started threatening the driver to stop and the brave driver just kept driving on as Shilpa and Mrs Shetty kept howling and crying for help which was

nowhere near coming . I was caught in the kind of situation I had not even imagined in my wildest dreams. The wild men kept banging on the van and even brandishing all kinds of weapons and the only two who kept their calm in the terrifying situation was the driver and Mrs Sunanda Shetty.

The wild men kept chasing our van till we reached the gates of the Holiday Inn where Rikku who had been informed about the incident by Mrs Shetty was standing all alone with just a little stick in his hand and the moment the wild men saw Rikku, they vanished from the site and Shilpa went to her suite and did not come down for the party where what had happened to her mother was the subject for hectic talk among the guests.

I heard people telling me about how Shilpa didn't like my telling this story and writing about it. I know Shilpa Shetty Kundra is a very big and wealthy woman today and such choti choti baatein don't mean anything to het, but what about a young journalist who was just making a beginning for whom this scary incident or call it an accident has stayed like a scar that cannot be erased by people who have short memories and love to forget incidents and their lives and careers which they believed cannot affect them now when only their glorious present matters to them.