Got a midnight call on Friday from a very hot and happening actress. “Do you know that Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Rani Mukherjee had a huge fight? They aren’t even talking to each other any more!” Er, excuse me? Sanjay and Rani in a fight? A rift? That seemed to be a figment of fertile and extremely self-motivated imagination. Or should I say, this is nothing but Black magic working in reverse.

In fact, on the morning after the midnight call when I rang up Sanjay to ask him about the supposed fight, Rani was right there in his house, screaming and whooping it up as I have seen her do at the Bhansali residence for the past two years. “Rani and I in a fight? Wow!” chuckled the man of the house. “Hey, Rani? Did you hear this one? We’re supposed to have fallen apart. What are you doing in my house?”

Rani couldn’t stop laughing. “You know, I knew these rumours would start. People just can’t bear to see us together. After all, we’ve created something which very few director-actress teams have ever done. Sanjay is my mentor. He can scream at me. And he often does. He screams at those he’s close to. But at the end of the day he’s one of my closest friends. I love Leela Aunty and Sanjay. That won’t change regardless of whether we do another film together or not.”

So the question, who is spreading these rumours of a massive showdown between Bollywood’s most accomplished director-actress team, and why? The answer is very simple. Many of Rani’s colleagues particularly of the female gender cannot bear the thought of the duo doing another Black together.

In fact, one of the primary preoccupations in the industry is to break up successful star-director teams. And what better target than Rani who keeps largely away from the press and therefore incurs the wrath of the Page 3 tattlers? She admits her relations with the press have been uneasy. “Not because I disrespect the media. But because I don’t like to unnecessarily talk about myself, or my achievements. Does it mean they should make up stories about me?”

Whatever the reason, the fact is, the Black duo is far from finished with each other. Sanjay may or may not work with her in his next film. But she’s definitely an actress he’ll be going back to?no matter how hard the spoilsports try to hawk manufactured rifts.

SKJ