Shakira Heights

SPOTLIGHT

back in the 1950s, when David Lean and Roberto Rossellini both hitched up with Indian women, Louella Parsons had hysterics: "What do our stars see in these Hindoos?" There may now be an answer: Shakira Caine, the ravishing, mysteriously low-key wife of Michael Caine, who has quietly been tending the scaffolding of their seventeen-year marriage while he's built a world-class career.

Shakira is actually Muslim, an Indian from Guyana, on the Caribbean coast of South America, and this year she's stepping out of purdah. Her new line in handcrafted jewelry and embroidered Kashmir shawls is bringing Grand Mogul opulence to Bergdorf Goodman. Shakira first thought of doing faux-lndian jewelry when she was romanced by the stones at the Mefs "Costumes of Royal India" show. She contacted the jewelry's producer, Sunita Pitamber, in Bombay, and was soon making her first-ever visit to the Indian subcontinent, and captivating everyone by being lovely, laid-back, and listening a lot.

If s one of her enduring qualities, say friends. Another is the sudden glint of steel flashing beneath the dusky-velvet exterior. Michael Caine—who saw Shakira on a coffee commercial in London in 1971, sought her out, and convinced her to marry him—agrees: "Gloria Steinem's totally wrong. Asian women may appear soft and compliant, but they have wills of iron." When he began to pursue her she avoided him, conscious of his reputation as a Swinging London Lothario. But at first meeting they were mutually smitten. "It was fate," she says. "It was a sixth sense, ESP or something like that," he says.

Of their life together—bringing up their teenage daughter, Natasha, spending ten years in L.A., now living back in England—Shakira chooses her words carefully: "When you are married to such an extraordinary man, and such a brilliant actor, you try to lead a very, very ordinary life."

SUNIL SETHI