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Jan 24, 2000

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Electric Ray

She set the desert on fire in the video for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Afreen Afreen. Now Lakme is eyeing some sizzling profit figures with their "face of the millennium", model Lisa Ray. The sultry, light-eyed beauty is the latest in an illustrious line-up that has included hot names such as Shyamolie Verma and Aishwarya Rai. Why Lisa? Says Sonia Singh, marketing manager for Lakme: "We wanted a person who had external and internal beauty and a woman who felt she's on top of the world." Same mantra as the Miss World folks.

A Modest Man
Let's not call it one-upmanship, it's healthy competition. When Malayalam superstar Mohanlal co-produced Vanaprastham with a French company, rival Mammooty was expected to announce an international project. But the man has turned producer with a domestic venture instead, a 260-episode serial for DD Thiruvananthapuram. "I've no money now to make a big-budget movie like Vanaprastham and so started modestly," explains the multiple national-award-winning actor. Sensible chap.

Expo Exposure
Cars aren't the only models at Auto Expo 2000. The annual automobile fair at Delhi's Pragati Maidan has some of the city's leading female models acting as hostesses at the stalls. Like the long-limbed Joey Mathews and Miss India-World 1998 Annie Thomas who are buzzing around explaining the nitty-gritty to interested visitors at the Piaggio stall. "I am doing this for the exposure," says up-and-coming mannequin Apoorva who's also there, "and also because I enjoy this kind of thing." As for the money ... Ahem, don't ask.

Figure This Out

This isn't fair! For her maiden foray into Hindi films, slim-as-a-reed model Bipasha Basu has been asked to gain weight by directors Abbas-Mastan (Baazigar, Soldier, Khiladi). It's an unfamiliar request for a woman more used to shedding calories to fit into those itsy-bitsy numbers on the ramp. "We want her to look much fuller on screen," says Abbas. They also want her to "make her dimples appear fuller". Huh?

-Anna M.M.Vetticad

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