Temple visit by Aishwarya, Abhishek fuels wedding rumor
Showbiz Desk

NEW DELHI—Two of Indian film’s leading stars visited a temple to offer prayers, fueling rumors that actress Aishwarya Rai and popular heart-throb Abhishek Bachchan were set to wed, reports said.
Rai, Bachchan and his star parents, Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan and actress Jaya Bahaduri, went to the Hindu city of Varanasi to appease Mars and take ritual baths, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency said.
The prayers were being offered to clear up mismatches in their stars, the Times Now news channel reported, referring to the Indian custom of checking a couple’s horoscopes to make sure they are compatible.
Rai, who was voted among the top 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2004-05, has a poorly placed Mars, the channel said, which could have a negative influence on her own and her husband’s life. According to Indian astrologers, in the worst cases, those who wed a person with a badly placed Mars will die an early death.
Indian celebrity journalists claim that previous actors who have dated the former Miss World have suffered a string of flops for the duration of the romance. Rai herself is sorely in need of a hit film, industry observers say. Yet Rai is easily India’s biggest female celebrity and the Times Now channel showed mobs of people milling around for a glimpse of the stars at the temple in the north Indian city on the banks of the sacred river Ganges.
More than two dozen priests presided over the prayers, which lasted an hour and a half, the PTI report said. “They performed the rituals with great zeal. Amitabh and Jaya offered the ‘jalabhishek’ (offering water to the deity). I also requested Abishek and Aishwarya to do so,” said temple priest Srikant Tripathi.
The Bollywood rumor drive has been in overdrive in recent weeks speculating that the film world’s top stars may wed. The Times of India reported Sunday that the Bahcchan family had taken Rai to task for a steamy kissing scene opposite another actor.