Reader's Choice

I'm always keen, of course, to respond to regulars' thoughts about what might appear in this space. Recently, dear Bobby - could he have been tiring of our steady diet of Upen and John? - provided a mysterious link.

And this was the photo at that link. Hmm...thought I. Not without promise. Don't you agree? His name, it turns out, is Neil Nitin Mukesh, and he's a rising star, it would seem, in the Mumbai firmament.

He comes from an acting family, and after a brief stint as a child star, he only recently returned to the screen, very much not a child.

He has, one reads, to date resisted the kinds of roles - so eagerly snapped up by Messrs. Patel and Abraham - that require acquiring the male equivalent of a fifties sexbomb's figure. But still, he has his own kind of allure, I think.

And even with his apparent emphasis on high-toned drama over crowd-pleasers, it would seem that he has this year gone his rivals one better - moving beyond mere shirtlessness to full on nudity.

The picture's called Jail, and one can only imagine what goes on. I, for one, certainly wouldn't mind seeing more, despite what looks to be the star's inappropriate use of Nair or some such depilatory.

But I do have ask: what kind of name for a Bollywood star is "Neil"? It's like trying to conceive of someone named Poindexter Kapoor.