Guest writer Malini Agarwal aka the popular and pretty blogger and radio host Miss Malini gives us the scoop on the GQ awards plus the pictures to prove it!
While the UK franchise of GQ Magazine held their Men of the Year Awards (now in its 12th year) on September 9th 2009 (Psst! Frieda Pinto was there for that by the way) Alex and Namita Kuruvilla played host as GQ India kicked off its very first awards show last night at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. GQ India celebrated 16 inspirational Indian men (and 2 outstanding women) leaders who shone brightest in their field from sports to politics, film, literature, business and fashion. And dude I have to say what a turn out! Now I’m hardly one to scoff at a fancy party and their (will they show up?) wish-list but I was hardly expecting to share (was it red?) carpet space with the likes of Amitabh & Jaya Bachchan, Abhishek & Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Rahul Khanna, Irfan Khan, Karan Johar, Lara Dutta, Abhay Deol and even Priya Dutt all on the same night!
Also Rahul Khanna (who unfortunately does a very good job of remaining out of the press and away from Mumbai) made a dashing appearance as the evenings dishy host and was even yummier than I recall. Plus he’s funny, follow him @R_Khanna on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean. Just before he went on stage he tweeted this picture with the caption, “One of the perks of hosting the GQ Awards… ;-)”
Oh look! I spotted Miss Pinky again sometime later in the lobby but I’ve promised I won’t say anything about her outfit. (See Rahul I did good didn’t I? And thanks for letting me use your picture!) By the way didjya know Dino Morea tweets too @DinoMorea9? Another yummy.
Pre-show the lobby was full of Page 3’s favorite faces (amongst other fairly fruit-ily dressed guests) I spotted A.D. & Sabina Singh, Narendra Kumar Ahmed, Arjun Khanna, (Bollywood’s favorite designer) Manish Malhotra, (Bollywood’s favorite stylist) Anaita Shroff Adajania, Bandana Tewari, Fahad Samar & Simone Singh who was called up to do a last minute award announcement (flawlessly of course she’s a seasoned emcee) got these gorgeous earrings from Calcutta aka Kolkata, apparently there is a flourishing designer jewelry market there, who knew? Devraj & Nikita Sanyal are my peeps, Niki and I used to work together at Go 92.5 FM (what a blast) and Devraj has several high-end jobs (you could call him my inspiration) He’s the Global CEO of Desihits Inc. and also co-owns Brioni India!
Ivana Perovic is one of my favorite party people. She has really great energy and I’ve watched people gravitate towards her at every event, if you ever frequented Not Just Jazz by the Bay many years ago you’ve probably even seen her dancing up a storm with beau Daniel Shah (he owns the once-rocking Club Cabana in Goa, now they want him to give it up because he’s not a local, sucks.)
But like I was saying for an awards show maiden effort they sure packed it chock-full of star power. Also the evening was very tastefully done, cocktails in the lobby (with mood lighting, hence my sunburned picture effects) no crazy Bollywood song-and-dance number between awards and mostly short and sweet acceptance speeches (thank the lord.)
Oh and they flew down two killer acts as well, one was this insanely talented hip-hop dance troupe off “Britian’s Got Talent” (I could just image Abhishek Bachchan bopping to the beat when those guys were dancing and it made me happy inside) and the other a jazz, punk, rock fusion duo on violins that looked like Roxette but played like Vanessa Mae. Sadly the violin-couple got a slightly confused reception and most of the glitterati hot-footed it to the lobby for a drink following an uncomfortable exchange of glances that quite clearly said “don’t look now, they’re not famous but they’re still being weird!” OMG speaking of weird, I just realized never-miss-a-party Kishen Mulchandani was MIA (LOL didn’t get an invite? Could it be?!)
I saw, Abhay Deol, Irrfan Khan, Shashi Tharoor, Karan Johar and Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Omar Abdullah, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Saif Ali Khan, Lara Dutta, Kareena Kapoor, Karan Johar, Malaika Arora Khan, Katrina Kaif, Chitrangada Singh, Jacqueline Fernandez, Dino Morea, Farhan & Adhuna Akhtar, Shobhaa De, Esha Gupta, Queenie Dhody, Simone Singh, A.D. Singh, Harsh Mariwala, Tanya Dubash, Nandita Mathani, Kalyani Chawla, Yash Birla, Manish Malhotra, Narendra Kumar, Chitrangada Singh, Sophie Chowdhary, Sheetal Mafatlal, Atul Kasbekar, Rita Dhody, Rajesh Pratap Singh, Arjun Khanna, Aki Narula and the thalassemia patient Nafisa Piludiya, who was called on stage to meet her hero and Lifetime Achievement awardee Amitabh Bachchan (for approximately 10 seconds.)
Here’s the complete list of winners too…
Writer of the year – Neel Mukherjee
Artist of the year – Atul Dodiya
Designer of the year – Rajesh Pratap Singh
Breakthrough Talent of the year – Abhay Deol
Excellence of the year – Vishal Bharadwaj
TV Personality of the year – Sreenivasan Jain
Businessman of the year – Aditya Puri
Excellence of the year – Kareena Kapoor
Outstanding Achievement of the year – Irrfan Khan
Sportsman of the year – Leander Paes
Excellence of the year – Karan Johar
Inspiration of the year – Shashi Tharoor
Ultimate GQ Man of the year – Saif Ali Khan
Global Indian of the year – Dr. Rajendra Pachauri
Woman of the year – Katrina Kaif
Young Leader of the year – Omar Abdullah
Lifetime Achievement of the year – Amitabh Bachchan
Check out MissMalini.com for Bollywood and the Bombay party circuit unplugged! And you can also follow her on Twitter.
