Rani to talk about her 'engagement'

By Subhash K Jha

Apart from a scene or two in her films, Rani Mukherjee has never touched a cigarette in her life.

A story that Rani has been lately puffing on the cancer stick has her family and friends amused exasperated and bewildered.

A very close friend of Rani says, "Rani's mother has apparently been asking Rani to quit smoking. Rani's mom is having fits. She wants to know why she'd ask her daughter to quit smoking when the girl doesn't light up at all?

All her friends smoke and drink, and Rani is okay with that. But she won't touch either. We've never seen Rani smoke in our life. She has done a couple of scenes in Bicchoo and Bunty Aur Babli where she had to smoke. Beyond that she has never touched the damned thing. "

Says the friend, "First the false report on Rani's engagement with Aditya Chopra, now this report about she being a smoker…The day Rani was supposed to have been engaged she was shooting the entire day for Pradeep Sarkar's Laga Chunri Mein Daag and laughing her head off.

'Hey guys guess what? I got engaged and I don't know about it,' she called her friends and joked. But now Rani is really up to her neck. Her father cannot go on clarifying on her behalf.

Even on the engagement issue she felt it wasn't right to for her ailing dad to be harassed. 'Dad is already handling my work. How much more can he take?' Rani said to us friends.

Her silence is being misconstrued as acquiescence. Rani has been lying low because she feels the stories are much too baseless to be dignified with a clarification. But now she feels some people are taking advantage of her silence. "

The lady in question is all set to speak out against all the controversies.

Ironically, the story about her smoking comes at a time Rani is all set to do a campaign against smoking.

Says the friend, "Rani had decided to do an anti-smoking campaign on television even before this story came out. Now she's all the more determined to do the campaign, and not just that.

She'll soon be giving her version on the supposed engagement with Aditya Chopra because her family and close friends feel such talk and her silence are damaging her career.