Hotelier-turned-actor Vikram Chatwal announced on Thursday his engagement to long-rumored girlfriend Priya Sachdev.

Chatwal was in India to promote his film “One Dollar Curry” at a film festival in Goa. During a visit to Bombay, he asked Sachdev to accompany him to a gurudwara. She describes the rest to The Indian Express:

In true filmi style, after they both did the matha tek, he slipped a 10-carat diamond ring on her finger. “He said, ‘This is an engagement ring. Do you accept?’” says Sachdev. “I was stunned. We couldn’t even hug in the temple. But we called his family and then called mine and everyone was very surprised.”

Delhi-based Sachdev, a former New Yorker, currently splits time between modeling and working on her new television show — an “Entertainment Tonight”-like rundown of films, celebrities and gossip. Like Chatwal, she has big-screen aspirations:

Bollywood offers have already poured in for this Bharatnatyam and Kathak dancer, but most of them have involved playing the third angle in a love triangle. “I don’t want to start as the other woman,” says Sachdev. Apparently, certain producers have also offered striptease roles claiming that she could be the next Bipasha Basu of “Jism.”

The pair have not set a wedding date, but agree that “Jism” is the greatest movie title ever.

The Indian Express: Heroine addict
Endless Sepia Mutiny coverage: On the trail of Vikram Chatwal…, Win a date with…Vikram Chatwal?, One more dream for Chatwal, and Vikram Chatwal…actor?

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A daily part of too many of our late twenty-something, early thirty-something lives seems to revolve around the question of finding someone, simply to get our parents off our backs. 37 year old Priti Chowdhury, who is a pediatric anesthesiologist in Chicagoland, decided to finance and film a semi-documentary about her search for Mr. Right titled, Finding Preet. From the Philadelphia Inquirer [free registration required]:

At first glance, the dilemma sounds familiar: A successful woman in her late 30s isn’t married, and her well-meaning but old-fashioned mother and father nag her to find a husband.

But two things set this story apart.

The victim in question, Priti Chowdhury, 37, a pediatric anesthesiologist named one of Chicago’s most eligible women, spent a quarter of a million dollars to make a movie about her misadventures in love and dating. (And instead of objecting, her proud South Jersey parents are in it.)

I can already imagine dozens of my female friends looking for advanced tickets to this movie. Hell, with that many girls going, I may as well go too 🙂 Continue reading →

About a year ago, a friend asked me if I could spare a couple hours to talk with her film director friend as well as a lead actress who needed to conduct some basic background research on a film about the 1984 riots against the Sikhs in India that they were working on. They wanted mostly for us to give them our impressions upon returning to India after a long absence. In my case I talked about living in Delhi and doing volunteer work there and how my perceptions of India had changed between the 14 years that passed between the time I visited as a child and when I returned as an adult. The other person she interviewed happened to have been Sikh, and was a small child in Delhi at the time of the Riots. His recollections were perfect for the type of research they needed. It seems that the director, Shonali Bose, is set to release her film next month. From the AFP:

US-based Shonali Bose is set to release a film next month depicting anti-Sikh riots that hit India following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, after accepting cuts demanded by Indian censors.

She told AFP that “Amu”, based on her novel of the same name has been shot in English and cleared for release in India by the Central Board of Film Certification.

“Amu” tells the story of an orphan named Kaju [Actress Konkona Sen Sharma], adopted and brought up in Los Angeles by American parents, who returns to India to discover her roots and finds that her real parents were killed during the anti-Sikh riots.

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