Aargh, I apologize. I am hopelessly late on posting this one for multiple reasons which I will not bore you with. But here’s what I’ll do, I’ll post my pictures from Tote and then all the stuff I get from the PR (yes all the smiley posey ones) and you’ll hopefully feel like you were there! 🙂 Gotta say props to Edelman India for a super cute invite and dude that place is HUGE. Must have been at least 2,000 people there easy (and loads of eye-candy for both boys and girls!)
So Malini & Rahul Akerkar (of Indigo fame) hosted this massive extravaganza on Friday at Tote. I don’t even know how big it is because I’m pretty sure I didn’t see the whole thing. As soon as you enter you get the sense of a very swanky set up with several banquet halls which I’m sure will be used for countless weddings of the rich and famous. Upstairs there’s a super high-ceiling loft with a long bar and deck, a very promising hot-spot for the next six months or so (and well, if Indigo’s reputation is anything to go by, a lot longer than that.) Unfortunately its clear popularity as the place to see (and be seen) on Friday night (and possibly that crazy smoke machine) led to poor Praveena & Jamaal Mecklai being trapped on the stairs for quite a while!
As you can see, for this party nothing was off limits and there was a bar at each corner on every level. DJs Gary B and Johnny Deep (aka Nathan, a very sweet Punjabi-Aussie character) was spinning up a storm along with live percussionist Shovell and a saxophonist (My bad, I should have taken video instead of just bouncing around *damn* next time I promise. But props to Nikhil Chinapa and Pearl (Submerge Deep) for giving the place a seriously awesome music identity. 🙂
Bandana Tewari is awesome. Which is why I know she won’t mind me posting these pictures that she thought she looked silly in. I just love the whole Zeenat Amaan retro look and Bandana is the only one who can bring it back with this much oomph!
Oh and speaking of style, two looks I loved. Sabina Chopra in Sabyasachi and Swati Shah (the Scrabble champ) in a funky ensemble from her own store Besos that I told you to check out some time ago.
Rohan Sippy was also in an uncharacteristically jazzy shirt (which I quite liked) and is incidentally going to be my next guest on Pirate Radio and I’m pretty sure Mukul Deora will be up for it since he’s so big on music himself. Kishen Mulchandani (of course he was there) waved me a big ‘ol wave from across the room and Narendra Kumar Ahmed was as usual his happy shiny self.
At some point I ran into both these guys (no relation, don’t even know if they’ve met but they are both very quirky party people so I’ve clubbed them together.) Vogue’s art director Timothy Rennie has the most energy I’ve ever seen on a dance floor in one human being. This is him taking a power nap outside. Ash Sharma is at most parties and generally in a very good mood. The first time I met him he was pretending to be Borat for Halloween. (I’m now waiting for him to break out the spandex for Bruno.)
Towards the end of the evening (while my friends were making ridiculous boy-bets daring one guy to jump from the bar and land on a tree branch – don’t ask) I stumbled upon the real Fear Factor girls from Khatron ke Khiladi – Level 2. Last I heard they had octupi (
Didjya know? There are three forms of the plural of octopus; namely, octopuses, octopi, and octopodes. Thank you Google.) sticking to their heads and it
looks like Anushka Manchanda, Shveta Salve and Shonali Nagrani are BFFs now, although its hard to imagine anyone not being totally charmed by Anushka’s brand of raw energy. She’s SO much fun to be around and of late we’ve been playing Twitter tag wherever we go (follow her @IAmAnushka, P.S. I love her Bio: “ Yes. I’m crazy, and I like it.”
Oh and in case you are still curious about my friend Mike Melli’s attempt to be Spiderman, here’s what I have (although maybe it didn’t quite happen like that!)
Psst! Nina Manuel is back and we should hear wedding bells soon, but she was tired and didn’t let me take a picture 🙁