All fashion, some film

Shah Rukh Khan says he’s tired of hugs from beautiful girls. By now, he should be. He asked actor Anushka Sharma instead for a “passionate kiss”. He needn’t worry about his wife, he said, she’s far away: “What happens in Toronto, stays in Toronto!”

Anushka was the hostess of IIFA Rocks, an evening of fashion and music that preceded the main awards’ night. Karan Johar was her co-host. While Karan's Hindi’s far from perfect, Anushka seemed to have a tough time reading from the teleprompter. The star of the show was probably Sonu Nigam again. He lip-synched a self-composed song of love with Michael Jackson’s brother Jermaine; put up a fairly impressive medley mixing popular qawaalis to rock.

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Cricketer Brett Lee walked the ramp. As did actors Sonakshi Sinha, Neha Dhupia, Zayed Khan, Rahul Khanna... Shankar Ehsaan Loy's live act made for the fashion show's superb background score. Between the frills, most may not have noticed, there were also reasonably serious IIFA awards in technical categories given out. Oh, true.

The roster was a fair blend of deserving and not so deserving honours. Robot picked up prizes for art direction, special effect, make-up; Guzaarish for cinematography; Love, Sex Aur Dhokha for sound design; My Name Is Khan for background score; Band Baaja Baraat for editing, sound-recording, costume...