A parking mix-up outside Raghav Juyal's building and turbulence on Nani's flight together pushed back Mumbai's press meet for The Paradise, releasing September 24.
The Paradise team walked into its Mumbai press meet an hour late, and for once nobody was blaming traffic.
Nani, Raghav Juyal, Sonali Kulkarni and Kayadu Lohar showed up to a room full of visibly annoyed media, according to Bollywood Hungama. The actors broke from the usual pan-India press meet script too, taking questions directly from journalists instead of sticking to a host's pre-approved list. That's rare enough on its own. But it was the reason for the delay that actually got people talking.
Raghav walked on stage looking subdued, not his usual self, and owned up front. "We are sorry that we are late, though it wasn't our fault," he said, before blaming, half-jokingly, "The pilot. There were a lot of potholes on the way!" He followed it up straight-faced: "There was a lot of turbulence. So the delay."
Nani had his own airport story. He said the Hyderabad pre-release event left him emotional, describing an audience that reveres every technician on a film, "even the sound engineer." Mid-sentence, he spotted someone in the crowd stepping out and Raghav went after him, only for the man to turn out to be running the event's live webcast. Nani, realizing the whole thing was streaming, reacted with a mock "Baap re baap!"
Then came the actual reason for the hold-up. Nani revealed it himself: "Raghav ke driver ne kisi aur ki car chori kar di." Sonali Kulkarni and Kayadu Lohar, on stage alongside them, looked genuinely startled.
Raghav filled in the details. He'd asked his driver to bring the car around to the airport. The driver grabbed the wrong one, a resident's vehicle of the exact same model from Raghav's building, after a security guard mixed up the keys. Nobody clocked the error until the actual owner came down for work and found his car gone. When he asked the guard, the answer was blunt: "Aapki gaadi toh woh le gaye!" Confusion, some back and forth, and the delay compounded.
It's the sort of anecdote that writes its own headline, and Raghav and Nani clearly knew it, milking it for laughs rather than treating it as an inconvenience. Given how carefully choreographed most pan-India promotional events tend to be, a genuine mix-up like this stands out precisely because it wasn't scripted.
The Paradise, which has already drawn attention over its adult certificate, opens in cinemas on September 24. Whether the car eventually made its way back to its actual owner wasn't addressed on stage, and given how the story unfolded, that detail might just get asked about at the next press meet.
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