The stage is being set for a drama of the visual senses as Vogue, the bible of fashion, unfolds its first issue in India against the art deco Umaid Bhawan Palace here Saturday. The scale of the event seems like a Hollywood production.

Paola Ricotti, a creative director, has been brought in from Milan. The talented Sumant Jaikrishnan, a production designer, will work on enhancing an already imposing palace. His brief: use simplicity and style for Vogue’s debut.

And event manager Vandana Mohan will deftly manage the mayhem with her team backstage to bring in guests from Delhi and Mumbai on charter flights.

The Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan may have met in Delhi for diplomatic talks to improve bilateral relations, but in Lucknow efforts of another kind are on to improve ties between the two countries.

The city is hosting a Pakistani food festival—Zaika-e-Pakistan — and on the platter are Peshawar’s famour Chappali Kebabs.

“We are preparing Chappali Kebab. These are made from mutton and are usually bigger in size. They are very popular and a real favourite with people,” said Mehboob A Khan, executive chef, Hotel Avari, Lahore.

Food delight

Insan Foundation Pakistan (IFP) uses the powerful medium of street theater to captivate audiences in Delhi with its simple message for peace in the region.

The fourteen-member troupe, accompanied by Farah Mallik, Program Manager, IFP, was in Delhi to express solidarity with the People’s Summit Against Poverty (PSAP), an alliance of hundreds of activists from diverse movements spanning the South Asian region.

The Summit was held in Delhi in response to the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) a global campaign - the world’s largest ever anti-poverty campaign, timed so as to sensitize the masses about the upcoming UN World Summit at New York, on September 14-16, 2005.

In a historic fashion, business and diplomatic move, Faiza Samee, the Pakistani designer who once dressed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto for her wedding, has begun retailing in Delhi, the first ever for a Pakistani designer in India.

Samee, who will be selling at the Carma fashion boutique in Mehrauli, has even made saris for the first time in her more than two-decade fashion career, especially for the India launch.

“This is a dream come true,” Samee told IANS in an interview. “People have been telling for 10 years to sell in India. But there were too many complications and I wanted everything to be just right.

A military leader is how the world views General Pervez Musharraf. But it is his taste for modern art that has begun to open up minds as well as drawing rooms in Pakistan.

In Delhi after a five-day camp at Agra — the city where Musharraf attended the failed summit with Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2001 — to celebrate 350 years of the Taj Mahal, young artists from Pakistan acknowledged his contribution to making modern art commercially viable, particularly in conservative Lahore.

Actress turned director Sawera Nadeem, after passing out from the NSD, Delhi’s National School of Drama ,is on her new project these days which is based on Thomas Hardy’s novel “Far From the Madding Crowd”, written by a new talent Ali Arif.

According to the Daily Times, Sawera also plans to direct a production of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, a new adaptation to be written by Karachi-based artist and author Khurram Ali Shafique.

Both adaptations were still in progress so she could not give a definite date for completion, she reportedly said.

Wet, Set, Go…

This summer promise yourself that you will look fresh and gorgeous. Even if you are barefaced without a trace of make-up. All you’ve to do is be a true water baby. And by that we don’t mean just splashing in the surf during your holiday by the sea. Water can be your beauty Aid No 1, whenever, whenever you are – holidaying, sweating it out at your office or unwinding on a leisurely Sunday at home. Decide that you can’t do without water on your dressing table.

Aqua Skin

The first Bollywood concert to be held in Lahore, earlier scheduled for mid-February has been rescheduled to March 25.

When Concord 2004 was suddenly postponed last month, Bunty Walia, Managing Director of GS Entertainment had cited “technical reasons” for the deferment.

But the new date means that the first show of Bollywood stars in Lahore will take place the day after the one-day cricket match between India and Pakistan in Lahore (March 24).

Organised by Delhi-based Entertainment Works, Walia’s GS Entertainment is managing the stars, their stage acts and the script of the show.