Big-ticket birthdays
Mayawati celebrated her 52nd birthday this week by cutting a 52 kg cake. Last year, a fan had celebrated Lalu Prasad Yadav’s 60th birthday by cutting a 60-pound cake shaped like a railway engine. Renuka Bisht recounts of more memorable birthday bashes.
Raunchy party: In July 2007, a sting operation caught the Himachal transport and tourism minister GS Bali celebrating his birthday in a rather irregular way, drinking and making merry with call girls from New Delhi. Bali cried foul, saying he had partied decently and with family in tow, but he was forced to resign his cabinet position anyway.
Liplocking scandal: Two years ago, drama queen Rakhi Sawant good-naturedly stepped across to the Someplace Else restaurant in Mumbai to attend her “good friend” Mika’s birthday party. The rest as they say is history. She offered him an innocuous peck on the cheek, he locked onto her lips instead, the cameras captured it all and she shouted sexual assault.
Bloody offerings: J. Jayalalithaa is one politician who gets the most bizarre of birthday gifts. If one of her devotees chopped off his tongue to make a special offering on her birthday in 2002, another made a sacrifice of his fingers the next year. And on her 56th birthday in 2004, a karate teacher offered up 56 portraits of “Ma Shakti” etched in his own blood.
High-flying presents: Mukesh Ambani tends to celebrate his wife’s Neeta’s birthday in style. In 2006, he used the occasion to throw the party of the year, which was attended by Britain’s Prince Andrew and at which King Khan danced away till the wee hours of the morning.
But the Reliance Industries boss outdid himself last year, gifting Neeta a Rs 242 crore Airbus 319 corporate jet, which comes equipped with a state-of-the-art business office and a sky bar in the forward lounge complete with mood lighting.