Ready to scream, yell and throttle for our Boys in Blue tomorrow?? I hope for their sakes they win, otherwise jootey padengey! Sounds horrible? It is meant to! Cricket does crazy things to people. I'm no fanatic, but I will certainly be shouting, "Jhenda Oooncha Rahey Hamara'' tomorrow, along with a billion plus Indians! ********************* This appeared in Bombay Times yesterday... Goodbye Violet Eyes…. Elizabeth Taylor had slept with seven men in her life - which works out to one in every decade ( she died a year short of completing her eighth). Do the math for yourself… she famously said she only slept with men she married. She had been married to seven lucky men – one of whom she married twice. She also said , “ I couldn’t just have a romance - it had to be marriage.” In another context she joked her mother had told her she had kept her eyes shut for eight days after her birth. The first thing Liz saw when she opened them was an engagement ring – “ After that, I was hooked!” She was branded a ‘home wrecker’ for stealing Eddie Fisher away from the sweet and boring Debbie Reynolds. Two years after Fisher, she met Richard Burton on the sets of ‘Cleopatra’ and both were instantly smitten! He’s the irresistible Welsh bloke she married twice over – but even those two marriages were doomed. Ironic really, that a woman who was so hooked on marriage, could not hang on to a single husband. But she remained the eternal romantic till the end saying, “ You don’t get over men like the flu…!” According to Hollywood gossip, she was all set to tie the knot for the ninth time last year – but perhaps her failing health got in the way. What a life! To call someone as grand as her a mere ‘legend’ is to do her an injustice. Everyone is a legend these days. Liz Taylor was spectacular on all possible levels. She retained her title of the ‘World’s Most Beautiful Woman’ even on her deathbed, and millions of fans world wide must have wept when they heard the sad news last week. I thought she was magnificent in ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ ( for which she won an Oscar), and there can be no other movie Cleopatra ever again – such was her iconic presence in a film that deserves a second coming. In her later years, it wasn’t her violet eyes alone ( nobody else in the world had them) that carried forward the mystique. It was , in fact, her tremendous generosity and loyalty that got her the adulation. She stuck by her ‘best friend’ Michael Jackson, when most so-called friends had abandoned him during his sex abuse trial. She gave of herself to causes she believed in and was an early advocate and ambassador for international AIDS initiatives – a cause she began to back after her other good friend, Rock Hudson died of the disease. I doubt we shall see a similar star in our life time. She was as courageous as she was gorgeous. She held her own , and fought a brave war against a host of medical conditions for several years. Hollywood will no doubt honour her memory appropriately. I hope some film body in India puts a well- researched tribute together soon, so that this generation of film goers will get the chance to understand and appreciate the blinding luminosity of a glowing mega star - Elizabeth Taylor. RIP. ************** On a personal note, thanks to our host Vijay Mallya, my husband and I were fortunate enough to spend a few nights on the same bed Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had shared on their splendid yacht, the matchless ‘Kalizma’, which Vijay now owns! As you can imagine, it was an overwhelming experience!!