Stars go missing from Twinkle Beauty...

It's pandemonium big time inside telly-world's most colourful beauty parlour. The doors of Twinkle Beauty Parlour have been suddenly shut, allegedly by channel SAB, on some of its regular and committed customers (read actors). The tracks or storylines of most of the supporting cast other than lead actress and parlour owner Narayani Shastri have apparently been wound up without any prior notice to the actors.

"I arrived for my shoot for the 30th episode of the serial and suddenly I was told that my track has ended," says a seriously peeved actor Rajeev Paul. A sudden twist in the plot has Paul, who plays a doctor in the serial, migrate straight from Lajpat Nagar (where the show is set) to UK, with his family. And if that wasn't surprising enough, co-actor Smita Bansal learnt about the end of her track only when she got to the end of her lines for the day, while rehearsing. "I was reading my script for the day when I suddenly realised that my track was ending after the day's shoot.

It came as quite a shock to me. I checked with the production house and they said it was true," she says. As Maaninee Mishra, who played a lawyer in Twinkle Beauty Parlour demands to know: "What are my rights as a professional? Am I not entitled to an ethical explanation? Tell me how would these people, who are saying that there is nothing unethical about what they have done, feel if they had to be given a pink slip without any justification?"

Counters Priya Mishra, head of programming, SAB, "We haven't done anything unethical. This is not a routine kitchen saga but amulti-character show where the parlour is the protagonist. Customers keep coming and going and just as in real life, some patrons repeat and some don't, we too are opting for a new set of characters."