Renowned fashion designer Rohit Bal was offered the role of the drug lord in Tigmanshu Dhulia's Charas (Uday Chopra, Jimmy Shergill, Hrishitaa Bhatt).

Dhulia, who has earlier assisted Shekhar Kapur and Mani Ratnam, made an impressive debut with the recently released Haasil (Shergill, Bhatt, Irfan Khan).

Bal met Dhulia on a few occasions and even read the script, but found the character too negative. Plus, the designer wasn't comfortable with the idea of working in a film about drugs.

He will, however, feature in a cameo in Kaizad Gustad's Boom (Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff, Padma Lakshmi, Katrina Kaif, Bo Derek, Madhu Sapre, Zeenat Aman), where he plays himself. He has even designed his own outfits for the film.

Boom is not Bal's first brush with Bollywood. He also played himself in Kailesh Surendranath's Love You Hamesha, starring Akshaye Khanna and Sonali Bendre, but the film was shelved.

Model Farheed has now stepped into Bal's designer shoes; Charas will mark his debut in Bollywood.

Workaholic Kushan

Son of veteran journalist Pritish Nandy, Kushan is ready with his directorial debut, 88, Antop Hill (Rahul Dev, Atul Kulkarni, Shweta Menon).

The film is scheduled to release June 27, but Nandy has already started work on his next film, a love story-cum-suspense drama to be produced by his company Sarvodaya Musicals.

Nandy and business partner Kiran Shroff have penned the script. The cast is yet to be finalised. Portions of the film will be shot in Mumbai, the rest of it will be shot in Austria.

Another veejay joins the Bollywood bandwagon

MTV veejay Anusha makes her entry in Bollywood with a sizzling item number in Pritish Nandy's Mumbai Matinee.

Directed by Anant Balani (Jogger's Park), Mumbai Matinee also stars Rahul Bose, Perizaad Zorabian, Vijay Raaz and Saurabh Shukla.