Warships on the west coast

Angry caller: Many officials seem to be getting missed calls from an unknown number in West Bengal. The number happens to belong to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. It is learnt that she has been calling up the election commission officials and central paramilitary forces officers during her election campaigns to register complaints. While she managed to get through to a few officials, many others missed her call as they had not saved her number | Illustrations by Jairaj T.G.

Hold your horses!: The Twitterati among the BJP’s top brass received a sobering message last week. Within minutes of the announcement that President Ram Nath Kovind had signed the warrant appointing Justice N.V. Ramana as the next chief justice of India, Twitter was awash with congratulatory messages from BJP chief ministers, MPs and leaders. A senior party leader then realised that if the messages were only from the ruling party, there would be misinterpretations. The congratulatory tap was quickly turned off.

Who did it first?: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed on the need for home isolation and micro-containment zones during his interaction with chief ministers, the Aam Aadmi Party pointed out that he was talking about concepts that were first implemented by the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi. For effect, AAP leaders also recollected Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s interventions in dealing with the pandemic in Delhi to point out how his concerns with regard to the capital were misplaced. They said the Centre was forced to acknowledge Kejriwal’s model of governance.

Murder served hot: The upcoming Ridley Scott directorial, House of Gucci, has been making news for the deliciously bawdy photos of Lady Gaga from the sets. In one, she and Adam Driver drip Italian oomph on the deck of a ski chalet. In another, she nails the virgin-vamp vibe in a lace wedding gown and come-hither eyes. There is only one thing that can outshine Gaga—her character in the film, Patrizia Reggiani. She was convicted in 1998 for orchestrating the assassination of her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, grandson of the Italian fashion house founder, Guccio Gucci. When asked why she did not shoot him herself, she reportedly replied: “My eyesight is not so good. I didn’t want to miss.” Don Vito Corleone himself could not have come up with a better answer | AFP

Twitter wars: You better not mess with the Big Bull of Bollywood Abhishek Bachchan. When a troll asked British singer Sophie Choudry if she had been paid to praise Abhishek’s new film, The Big Bull, Abhishek replied: “Wait… what? Sophie, you should have told me. Not fair! I would have paid you for all the previous tweets, too.” Abhishek is among an elite club of stars who ‘give as good as they get’. Remember Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s “pit-stopping” picture when the debate was raging about her baring her armpits on a magazine cover? Or Taapsee Pannu’s comeback when a troll called her a ‘cheap actor’ whose mental state was not right? She asked him for therapy sessions and for tips on how to become an ‘expensive’ actor as inflation was becoming a real bother. Other troll-slayers include Shah Rukh Khan and Anurag Kashyap, whose fiery darts could make even the biggest street thug turn red in the face | PTI

Star bites: It should be fun to watch celebrities getting down and dirty in a kitchen. We are talking about those like Kareena Kapoor Khan, Malaika Arora, Arjun Kapoor and Karan Johar who are appearing in a new Disney Plus food show called Star Vs Food. “It was love at first bite for me, creating the mouthwatering pizza,” Kareena posted on social media about her culinary creation. The stars seem to have been good sports, with the famed celebrity tantrums—Kareena complaining of aching hands and Karan not wanting to ruin his “pretty face”—mostly for show. Now the question is: Who is going to eat all the food they make? We are guessing not these size-zero stars whose systems will probably go into shock mode at the sight of a pizza loaded with cheese | AFP