Indian Telly Awards

It was the fourth edition of the Indian Telly Awards, and they continue to grow bigger with each passing year! The industry turned out in strength at the Popular Nite of the Tellys last Friday, and the event was marked by excitement that heightened with each award announced, and performances that had the audience enthralled. The high point of the night, apart from the spontaneous ovation to the Kahiin To Hoga and Jassi.. teams that won several awards, were the performances by the veteran artistes.

Sudha Ba Shivpuri's Aati Kya Khandala act with Anang Desai, Deepak Qazir and Rajeev Mehta's spirited dances had the audience on its feet, applauding.

It was an occasion to honour those that had excelled in front of the camera in the past one year, and artistes as well as channel heads were present - to cheer, applaud, at times commiserate and essentially - to partake in the celebration of the one industry that's poised to surpass even Bollywood - the TV industry!

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It was a day for reconciliations. Monisha Singh, who left Balaji over a year ago for UTV, shared the evening's proceedings with Ekta Kapoor, and hi profile exec Tarun Katial who left the nest that nurtured him, Star India for Sony last year, was seen chatting comfortably with Star's Deepak Segal. There were others too, but some may prefer to leave these unsaid.

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It was touching, to say the least. When Shabbir Rishi Ahluwalia was proclaimed the best negative character of the year, the first person he hugged was arch on screen rival Akashdeep Ansh Sehgal. Not many may know it, but Akashdeep and Shabbir are close buddies in real life. No wonder then, that Shabbir raised his trophy to my buddy Sky!

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Among the inseparables were Sweta Keswani and her firang boyfriend Alex, and the lovely Gurdip Kohli and Sanjivani co star Arjun Punj. Arjun clicked away with the camera in his cell phone when Gurdip went up on stage, and faithfully hung around the dame till the event came to a close. Talk of devotion!

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Rajeev Khandelwal, Shabbir Ahluwalia, Hiten Tejwani and Rohit Bhakshi hung around close too, sharing smokes and chatting till the event got underway. Rajeev was understandably nervous, with a couple of nominatations up his sleeve. After the award, too, the guys, sans Rajeev of course, partied the night outside the venue of the Telly party. Tina Parakh joined them for a while too, we hear.

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Ekta breezed into the awards a trifle late, but was accompanied by her entourage, that included her own Panditji, dressed in spotless white. She needn't have worried about divine intervention though, Balaji's Kahiin To Hoga managed quite a few awards!