Amitabh Big Paa Day

The preparations for the grand premiere of Paa last night had started much earlier with Amitabh Bachchan visiting the venue at Wadala Imax at 1 am yesterday to check out all the arrangements.

Though the main event was scheduled to begin at 8.30 pm, a casually dressed Amitabh arrived at the venue much earlier at 6 pm and the first thing he did was to double check the arrangements.

He changed into natty formals shortly before the guests started arriving.

The Bachchans had divided their responsibilities to ensure that their guests are well-looked after. While Amitabh, Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai were standing at the entrance, Jaya Bachchan was looking after all the guests near the screens on the first floor.

Anil Ambani, his wife Tina and their son were among the first guests to arrive. Some of the power couples who attended the premiere were Shah Rukh Khan and wife Gauri, Ajay Devgan and wife Kajol, Hrithik and wife Sussanne, and Akshay Kumar and wife Twinkle. SRK sent Gauri and the kids upstairs while he stayed back to chat with the Bachchans for a while. SRK was seen hugging Akshay Kumar. Arshad Warsi and wife Maria were there too.

Ritesh Deshmukh, Dino Morea and Rakeysh Mehra and his wife followed shortly and the director seemed happy to catch up with his Rang De Basanti team Atul Kulkarni and Kunal Kapoor. Sharman Joshi made a late entry.

Ranbir Kapoor and Ritesh were engrossed in a conversation outside screen 3. Aishwarya came upstairs and was seen talking to Ashutosh Gowariker, his wife Sunita and Srishti Behl. Aamir Khan came with his 3 Idiots director Rajkumar Hirani and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Aamir left half-an-hour after the screening began.

Abhishek was seen chatting with Govinda, who came in quite late. Filmmakers David Dhawan, Satish Kaushik and Madhur Bhandarkar were there. Filmmakers Abbas Mustan came all the way from Lonavla.

The screening was held in all the four screens at Imax but it was screen 3, which had the maximum number of stars. The screening of the film started around 10 pm. Kangna Ranaut hung around outside for a while, posing for pictures even though the film had started. She soon went inside the theatre.