There’s heaps of ways to keep your bod ship-shape - from gruelling workout regimens to spiffy surgical routines. But saving face in the figurative sense, oooh that’s real tricky stuff! It can make a girl (a guy, too!) say and do the strangest things. Final result: you end up with egg all over your mug, not just looking something stupid like you started out with, but kinda reeking freshly sulphurous too! Bipasha Basu may just know that feeling. Fate’s little twists recently had her attempting a spot of damage control...which possibly created even more damage than there was in the first place! The fiasco got going when news broke about Mani Ratnam’s new addition to his saga, purportedly based on the Ramayana. The nouvelle attraction was to be in the comely shape of Ms. Basu. She was to sashay in as Ravana’s beautiful wife Mandodari. A seductive song, a scene or two and she would most likely disappear into her boudoir, presumably cheesed off with a husband who preferred pursuing a pious goody-two-shoes to her own willing and winsome self. Mani Sir, as his droves of disciples respectfully address him, has a thing for these short ‘n’ spicy additions in his films; remember Sonali Bendre’s ‘Humma, humma...’ in BOMBAY... Mani Sir also has a thing for total and absolute secrecy - the guy would give clam a complex. So, naturally not a word was forthcoming, not from the horse’s mouth and not from his production unit, either. Not a single document had even been signed; strictly verbal was as far as they’d gone. Yet it was splashed around in the tabloids, this new development in RAVANA. Buzz goes that it was Bips herself, giddy with delight, who couldn’t help but apparently bubble it out to her friends. Now some of these ‘friends’ were evidently in media and within hours the ‘scoop’ was served up hot - if hastily. Pity nobody bothered to check with the filmmaker. Presuming Ratnam the Reticent spoke, he would’ve served up the even more surprising scoop - that he’d changed his mind. Mandodari’s services would not be required after all, thank you! Of course, there was no question of blame. Mani had simply been mulling over the whole Mandodari angle; it had been an interesting thought, a light diversion. Buzz goes that they had been prepared to settle for any item hottie - Bipasha was, in fact, a more substantial prospect than they’d planned on in the first place. And she was very willing indeed. A role in Mani Sir’s most talked about opus, even a two-scene one, is not to be sneezed at. Heck, there’d probably even be hotties fighting to grab the role of Ravana’s ugly sis - anything for Mani Sir. Mani Sir, however, during his constant ruminations over his masterpiece in the making, realised that the whole Ravana wife angle wasn’t working. It wasn’t enhancing but was actually interfering with the original storyline. So it received one quick red cross on the storyboard. So where did that leave Bips, who most likely had been engaged in some rigorous preparation in the art of throwing seductive stares? Red and cross, indeed! Jumping the gun can be sooo tiresome!! Desperate times, as they say, call for desperate measures. Bips is supposed to have tracked down Ratnam the Reticent to wherever he was shooting in some dense and distant forest. She needed vindication, apparently. In order to put a stop to the disbelieving sniggers, she allegedly required an official statement declaring that she had been brought on board for RAVANA initially. That she was edited out came later; people had to know that she hadn’t simply made up the whole thing in the first place! The producers, it appears, understood her catastrophe. Or maybe they simply pretended to coz a woman scorned is best promptly agreed with. The official statement was released to the press, just as the lady allegedly desired. And peace could reign in the forest again. It didn’t. For, on its heels, has come a story so strange it must leave a certain lady breathing fire... A story that insinuates that there is more behind Bips’ aborted appearance in RAVANA than meets the eye. And this “more” apparently goes by the name of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan! Ash, the whispers go, apparently couldn’t digest the idea of a Mandodari-come-lately stealing her thunder. She herself would be in her simple, de-glam Sitaesque style. And the sultry, glam competition would make her look as appetising as last night’s cold rice. So, the whispers continue, Ash got together with her good friend, Mani’s wife, and did the dark deed: they sent the sultry competition into exile! Really, did the originator of these very creative whispers stop for a second to consider just what they were implying? Can anyone in their right mind imagine the formidable Mani Sir looking on meekly as his heroine and his wife play scheming shrews? And the prospect of a 7-minute role giving the leading lady a severe case of insecurity; how ludicrous is that?! Love her or loathe her, this is Ash we’re talking about. Not exactly small fry to be rattled by a passing fancy. Remember, she didn’t wear a bikini like Bips did but it was still she who ‘crazy kiya re...’ in DHOOM: 2. Moral of the story: Even fiction fabrication should have its ‘lakshman-rekha’!