WE just loved this particular press release sent by publicists for Miss Sri Lanka, Gamya Wijayadasa, the second beauty from the emerald isle to head for the brightlights of Bollywood after Jacqueline Fernandez.
Miss Wijayadasa became Miss Sri Lanka in 2009, and in case you were wondering what took her so long, apparently she was doing an MBA in Melbourne. But, the press release says, one peremptory summons to do an item number for Manish Manikpuri’s film Alaap and she was on the next flight out. All to do an item number for a song engagingly titled Chadhti Jawaani, which seems to loosly translate into ‘rising sap’.
Already the song is a rage all over Chattisgarh (in Jharkhand) where Gamya recently performed at a promotional event.
The press release has her say unblushingly that she flew down to Raipur to shoot this song even without having heard it. “It’s a situational number that has been picturized at an engagement party of one of the pivotal characters in the film,” she said, talking the talk already. After all, she is an MBA and is supposed to be smart, so she has put her own spin into the movements for lyrics like “Chadti jawani mazedar/Dheere dheere le le maja.”
Of course, she didn’t understand the lyrics but that was not an issue. After all, the film is all about the power of music being used to quell extreme attitudes like Naxalism etc.
Here’s something both Centre and state governments can learn. Currently employing anti-Naxalite forces in various forms, including the Greyhounds in Andhra Pradesh, the CRPF in Central India, and the C-60 Special Action Groups in Maharashtra, they can now take a leaf out of Alaap and instead deploy Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra, Malaika Arora, Mallika Sherawat and other item bombs to tackle the menace of left-wing terrorism.