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Me Mamata
See the lady in the picture. Get rid of the jewellery. Wipe off the pancake. Tone down the colours. Pull the hair back. And who do you have? At least two teleserial producers will reply "Mamata Banerjee". Actress Papiya Adhikari is playing characters modelled on the Union railways minister in not one but two Bengali productions, Bijoyeeni and Khoborer Kagaj. "People crowded the location when we started shooting," she says. "They were shouting 'Didi aashche, Didi aashche (Didi is coming)'." She is. To the idiot box in Bengal.

It Takes Two
She's having a difficult time. Actress Soni Razdan is making a mostly-English-part-Punjabi film based on Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters. Remember Kapur (inset) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia region) last year for this novel? "I'm writing the script now," says Razdan. "The film's in the pipeline, but money has to flow in from another pipeline." She can't tap producer brother-in-law Mukesh Bhatt, because "it's not Hindi commercial cinema". Tough job then.

Dreamz Team
It's the way best buddies are going these days; turning co-producers. Undeterred by the burnt fingers that Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla are nursing after their Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani debacle, Satish Kaushik, Anupam Kher and Anil Kapoor are starting a production firm. Coming up from Voice Entertainment is Kher's directorial debut with an Anil-Ash starrer. But unlike Khan and Chawla's Dreamz Unlimited, they have plans for software, TV, films, building multiplexes and, says Kaushik, an NSD graduate, "we want to make theatre productions on a broad scale, on the lines of Broadway." Some people don't forget their roots.

Bolo Tara Tara
Anyone wonder where Tara Deshpande is these days? The glamorous veejay-turned-actor-turned-writer, who's known to be pretty choosy about her work, is back on the big screen this year with Govind Menon's film Danger co-starring villain of the moment Ashutosh Rana and model Jas Arora. No, it's not one of those westernised glamour-doll roles. It's a thriller in which Deshpande's even "wearing a sari throughout," says producer Vasant Chhedda. "We want the audiences to look at the character, not at the actress." But can they at least look at the face? Please.

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