While one newspaper carried a story about "Black" director Sanjay Leela Bhansali making a film called "Red" with Aishwarya Rai, Mumbai's leading tabloid Mid-Day created quite a flutter with their story about a "spat" between Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar, the two co-stars of Vipul Shah's "Waqt: Race Against Time".
According to the report, Bachchan stormed out of a private screening of the ready-for-release film after he saw what the director had shot with Akshay Kumar. The "scoop" also stated that Akshay was seen pleading his case with the visibly upset Bachchan.
As intended, the story created a sensation in Mumbai on April Fools' Day. While one section of the public believed it was a prank, another thought it was too serious an issue to be trifled with.
But the day after the story, Bachchan says: "It was a joke planned by director Vipul Shah and Akshay. And since it was good publicity for the film, I said, 'Why not? It's okay. One should always have a sense of humour about such things. Or you end up taking yourself too seriously."
Akshay is a notorious prankster, known to pull tricks on his co-stars with as much impunity as Salman Khan, Ajay Devgan and Suniel Shetty - the other well-known pranksters of Bollywood. Abhishek Bachchan is another habitual prankster.
"Fun and games are part of life. Otherwise work would get seriously boring," says Akshay.
So did the film industry have fun this April Fools' Day? Aamir Khan surely did. He apparently invited all his friends to a "special screening" of his latest film "The Rising" at the outermost suburbs of Mumbai in Film City.
When the excited crowd reached the venue, a notice informed them there was no show.Till some years ago, Aamir's favourite prank used to be spitting into his unsuspecting colleagues' hand while pretending to read the palm.
Bollywood's most notorious prankster perhaps is Asha Parekh whose tricks with her co-stars are still talked about.
"Once I hid Sunil Dutt's slippers under a chair in a studio. He had to go home barefoot...Many years later he retrieved those slippers while shooting at the same time," Parekh says, still giggling at the memory.
There's always room for fun in the film industry.
