Out for good
Papiya Sengupta probably thought she was back with a bang after she signed on Reena Wadhwa's Neeyat. But it seems she was wrong. After appearing in just three episodes, she has made her exit from the serial. Apparently she was thrown out after she didn't report on the sets for her shooting. All efforts to trace her went in vain. She was not available on her cellphone or at her residence and repeated messages on her pager proved futile. A furious Sanjay Wadhwa, executive producer of Neeyat, said that he was unhappy with her unprofessional behaviour. ``If she had a problem she should have called me or my assistants. It was only after we packed up our shoot the next day that her sister called and said she couldn't make it. So now we have changed the script in such a manner that we won't need her anymore,'' says Wadhwa.

Funny fellow
The new comedy man on the block seems to be Rajesh Gupta, the director of Yehi Hai Zindagi, Maal Hai To Taal Hai on Star Plus and Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai on Zee. While both his sitcoms are doing fairly well he has been slotted as the ``comedy director'' and most of the offers he gets are for sitcoms. His latest venture is Buddha Ghar Pe Hai, a serial about a 50-year-old man who is always worried about his young wife deserting him and eloping with someone. There is also a film script in the pipeline. No, this time Sooraj Bharjatiya's one-time assistant is not planning a comedy. It is apparently a romantic social family drama. Along the lines of the blockbuster Hum Aapke Hai Kaun may be?

On the move
Anant Mahadevan is becoming adventurous. Recently he canned an episode which is supposedly a take-off on the Prime Minister's bus trip to Lahore. In the Tellywood serial, Satish Shah is the President of a Hotel Owners' Association and takes his family from Mumbai to Punjab by bus. Giving them company are Shatrughan Sinha and Dev Anand, their duplicates playing the roles of course.

The entire episode was shot in a bus. The crew did face a few problems shooting on the run. For starters, the monitor conked off due to a short circuit. A new one was connected which also went dead following another short circuit. But Mahadevan refused to pack up and decided to shoot without a monitor. ``Someday I'll be directing a film and there won't be monitors there, so why not here,'' he said, smiling. For the uninitiated, what Mahadevan was referring to was the monitor on which a serial maker can see the proceedings as they are being shot. This facility is not available for a filmmaker.

Lovey dovey
For quite sometime now there have been rumours of an affair between Amit Behl and actress Vaibhavi. The latest grapevine is that they are planning to get married. We are still trying to figure out the date. The two are so much in love that there is not a day when they don't meet, despite their hectic schedules. So, Behl drops in on the sets where Vaibhavi is, even if it's in Madh island and vice versa. And the day both of them are busy shooting, they have a dinner date after their shoots. Also, we hear that Bhel has booked a Tata Indica. No, its not for himself but apparently a gift for his sweetheart on her birthday.