Led by Aishwarya and Abhishek, the stars shone bright at the science city auditorium on Saturday evening for Boroplus Anandalok Puraskar 2010.

Abhishek and Aishwarya won the Best Actor and Best Actress trophies for Mani Ratnam’s Raavan, an honour which meant a lot to the first couple of Bollywood. The two had, in fact, shot here in the city for a couple of important sequences of the film by the river. “Calcutta is always welcoming and we get such a warm response whenever we return to the city. But that we are winning for Raavan makes this trip that much more memorable,” said Aishwarya, looking stunning in a green zardosi sari. With Abhishek all ears in the front row, Ash added: “An honour like this gives much more impetus to our pursuit of the craft and inspires us to do more impactful and meaningful cinema.” A not-so-veiled reference to the fact that Raavan did not do well at the box office.

Saturday was a very special evening for Abhishek, who had made his first ever public appearance in the city at the same Science City auditorium a decade ago. “It was on this stage that I had first experienced the love and adulation of Calcutta when I had come to promote Refugee here,” Bachchan Junior said. Having always maintained that Calcutta is the place to be if you are “feeling down”, Abhishek added: “Calcutta, you are the most wonderful people on earth. You really made my evening.”

Before leaving the stage, Aishwarya shook Mir’s hand, which drove the host crazy. “Wonder what the reading must have been like on the Richter scale when she shook my hand on stage,” the t2 columnist later wrote on Facebook. He had earlier called up the Red Cross to send across a couple of ambulances. “I am going to faint!” he said, of the Ash effect. But after she shook his hand, Mir went bonkers and started kissing his own hand. Abhishek then decided to take matters into his own hands. He grabbed his wife’s hand, raised it for Mir to see and then kissed it deliberately. Mir went silent (for once), Ash couldn’t stop giggling and the crowd erupted. This fun moment of one-upmanship apart, Abhishek was “impressed” with Mir’s madness on stage, even asking the funnyman to “come to Mumbai for the Dostana 2 auditions”!

-Telegraph India