Rosy roti: The current popularity of a film personality can be estimated from the number and the sizes of the flower baskets, orchid arrangements and even Bonzai pots received from the stroke of midnight on the B-day. Florists submit salgirah dates on cyclostyled sheets to the film fraternity. From what I’ve evidenced, Karan Johar receives the highest number (are Guinness Bookwallas listening?).

Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan are besieged by flower baskets. Hrithik Roshan ditto. On the sentimental side, danseuse Helen always gets an enormous floral yearly hello from Mithun Chakraborty who considers her the momma of dance moves.

*Read alert: Apart from a few exceptions — notably Aamir, Shah Rukh, Hrithik, Kajol, and believe you this, Vivek Oberoi, none of them read their vast collection of books. On noticing Doris Lessing’s feminist novel Golden Notebook in the office of a certain senior superstar, I’d wondered about his take on its content. “Don’t read at all,” the gent had snapped. “Someone must have just placed the book on the shelf.” The interior decorator perhaps.

*Cocktail hour: Suddenly, stars declare that they are juicetotallers. Don’t touch hard stuff, just a drop of Chablis maybe whenever someone drops in. Or Bacardi shots are camouflaged in cola tins. A screen goddess of the mythologicals back in the 1950s would down Blood Marys, declaring that she loooooved tomato juice.
During a more recent decade, a sweetie pie guzzled vodka in silver tumblers, claiming it was eau minerale. Rishi Kapoor is the only one who has the bravado to declare that he enjoys his evening Scotch, laughing delightedly on narrating an anecdote — he visited the Johnny Walker distillery in Scotland on a whim, only to find the gates closed for the day. Cheers.

*Hidden costs: Besides their professional fees, ranging from the astronomical to the VERY astronomical, actors — happening or fading-out — expect the producer to pay for their hairdresser (plus assistant), make-up person (plus two assistants), valet (s) and chauffeur (s). Lore goes that a legendary playback singer would ask for the settlement of petrol bills — to and from the recording studio.
A beauteous actress would submit bills for her wads of chewing gum. So if you sign a star, you sign an entire cottage industry around him or her. Eeeps.

How suite!: Levels of importance are gauged by the hotel space accorded to each star during out-of-town shoots. Story goes that in South Africa, Sanjay Dutt and his then new bride Manyata, were assigned a dream suite with an indoor swimming pool.
Consequently, his co-stars in the multi-starrer had to be checked into rooms with private pool facilties as well to avoid deep trouble.

Vanity fare: Don’t want the producer to turn grey overnight? Than it’s judicious to organise double-room vanity vans for all the lead actors. Even the minor ones insist on a vanity residency nowadays. Or they huff about being ill-treated. Studio make-up rooms have become ancient history.

Cutting edge: Newspaper cutting agencies — which keep track of every word and item written on a star — and deliver the print barrage in a nuclear-secret-kind of file every week — is a common phenomenon. As for Internet blabber, stars ensure that they get a Google alert on whatever’s stated, even if it’s on an obscure site in Outer Mongolia.

‘These media types’: Practically every star grouses, “Oh you know the press types, they distort everything.” Conversely every media person says, “Oh you know these star types. They deny everything… but I’ve taped the conversation. So there!”