By Subhash K Jha

Sujoy Ghosh the director of Kahaani found himself left out at the International Indian Academy Film Awards 2013 which was held on Saturday night in Macau. The night belonged to Anurag Basu and his Barfi team, although Priyanka Chopra who was unconditionally brilliant in this forever-and-a-day feted film, lost out her best actress to Vidya Balan.

Never mind. While Priyanka stands a very bright chance of cracking all the national and popular awards next year for her biographical turn as Mary Kom, Vidya Balan after three successive years of award-binging could well be out in the cold for a couple of years... unless Kahaani director Sujoy Ghosh comes up with something brilliant again for his Balan (yup, that's what he calls her).

Ms Balan, duly accompanied to Macau's movie magical soiree by her producer-husband Siddharth Roy Kapoor (much in the same adoring loyal way that Madhuri Dixit was accompanied a certain Dr Nene) grabbed the award and dedicated it to Sujoy who was unable to attend.

Ranbir Kapoor who won the best actor award at Macau again (and he will do so again next year for Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani or Besharam) was not there. But Katrina Kaif was there. Though she didn't win anything. But Anushka Sharma, Katrina's co-star from Yash Chopra's swan song Jab Tak Hai Jaan walked away with an award for Best Supporting Actress.

And that's a confounding categorization for a performance that was touted as a lead when Yashji's film was released.


Yash Chopra, may God rest his kind soul, and the amazingly skilled wordsmith Javed Akhtar were honoured with lifetime- achievement awards.

Deeepika Padukone publicly announced that she missed Ranbir in Macau. Katrina desisted from making any such proclamations. The two hotties, let me gently point out, kept a clear distance from one another in Macau.

Otherwise Bollywood bonding abounded in Macau. The younger actors Ayushmann Khurana, Arjun Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan were constantly chatting and joking together. Anurag Basu hung around with his Barfi producer Siddharth Roy Kapoor.

The two had a lot to be happy about, what with Barfi bagging Best Picture, Best Director, Best Music (for Pritam) and what-have-you. The only award Barfi missed out on was Best Homage To Charlie Chaplin.

A popular young actress who was nominated put the IIFA experience this year rather well. `It was one of the best organized awards functions of the year. But it came too late.

Everyone was tired of receiving and applauding the same winners since December 2012. In how many ways could Vidya Balan and Ranbir Kapoor thank the jury for honoring their performances in Kahaani and Barfi? At this rate film folks need a crash course in varying their thank-you speeches.

And now that the awards season has finally come to a closure, it can be sadly observed that every award including IIFA seems to have missed out on honouring one of the finest performances in a very long time.

Sridevi in English Vinglish.