Claridge's Hotel

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Elizabeth Hurley and Dylan McDermott

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LONDON - British model Elizabeth Hurley’s failure to turn up at India-themed events, including the launch of a fundraiser for victims of 26/11, has prompted a British newspaper columnist to ask if she is tiring of all things Indian”.

Mandrake asks only because the actress-turned-businesswoman was conspicuous by her absence at the launch of ‘To India With Love’, a fundraising book for the victims of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, to which she had contributed, said the popular Daily Telegraph column.

Her no-show followed an even more surprising absence earlier this month, at the Royal Rajasthan Gala, said the newspaper’s news and gossip column that runs under the title of Mandrake and is written by writer, broadcaster and theatre critic Tim Walker.

Hurley is married to Indian-born businessman Arun Nayar.

The paper quoted a guest at the gala dinner at the Banqueting House in Whitehall, hosted by the Maharaja of Jodhpur to launch the Indian Head Injury Foundation, as saying: It was very disappointing. Her absence certainly raised eyebrows.”

The Maharaja, Gaj Singh II, hosted Hurley and Nayar’s second wedding reception at the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur in 2007.

In March, the same column disclosed that friends of the couple were concerned about the relationship between Hurley and Nayar.

Earlier this month, I reported that Hurley, 44, was said by pals to have reluctantly accepted that she was unlikely to have a baby with Nayar, who has no children from his first marriage, said the column, published Saturday.

She told OK! magazine the other day that Damian, her seven-year-old son from a brief relationship with Steve Bing, the American businessman, ‘doesn’t want us to add to our family under any circumstances’.