Mistress of the Night.

(From Indian Express)

MUCH before British Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife Cherie inquired about the authenticity of her voluptuous, heaving bustline and kicked off a controversy of sorts in the UK, Ayesha Dharker had revealed, during a short tea break from rehearsal, that they were indeed heavily padded. ''They're meant to be that way,'' she had pouted. ''It's a spoof on the ultimate Bollywood sex-siren stereotype,'' the actress said of the purpose those well-rounded assets serve in Bombay Dreams, the Andrew Lloyd Webber-A R Rahman musical, which has stormed the London stage and where Ayesha plays the spoilt, demanding movie-star Rani. Jiggling her booty, shaking her hips to the beats of Shakalaka Baby to lusty cheers from the audience, Dharker recreates one of Bollywood's favourite love-song moments when she dances uninhibitedly in the rain (made to look real from mounted artificial showers), her white sari drenched to bare-skin transparency. It is not a moment quite Ram Teri Ganga Maili (''Gosh no! Nothing that drastic or erotic! This is just some harmless fun,'') but the sequence is a riot all the same, one that has got special mention in every review of the show in the British Press. Dharker, who many critics insist is the next best thing about Webber's musical (after Rahman's musical melodies), is visibly excited about the response her performance is generating in London. ''It's so funny really,'' she says, ''I'm finally playing a Hindi film heroine. The whole song-and-dance routine, the tantrums, the guile... And I'm getting all these good reviews for it.'' Laughing full-throatedly, Dharker says it is ironical because she has always avoided the hip-grinding-pelvis-thrusting heroine roles of Mumbai's masala movies all her life. 'Hollywood is a destination I might consider. An Asian can make it there. Didn't an African-American actress just win an Oscar?'But pray, which Bollywood mogul had offered her a leading lady role in those much maligned, mega-budget, shimmering song-and-dance extravaganzas, anyway? ''You'd be surprised,'' she snaps, insisting she has turned down many a Bollywood offer. ''I didn't do them because those films and their decorative roles just don't do anything for me,'' she says with a hiss in her voice. According to Dharker, it was the same reason why she did not leap at Rani's role when it was offered to her but actually paused to think and decide whether she wanted to do the whole 'Bollywood heroine' routine for Bombay Dreams. ''But then I thought, why not give it a shot,'' she shrugs jauntily. ''After all, it's the complete antithesis to what I stand for, and that's a good enough reason why I should do it. Because nobody expects me to pull it off. And to be quite honest, I wasn't quite sure myself if I could pull it off,'' she reveals. Dharker, as you may have guessed by now, is entirely unpredictable. She will turn down a role in Santosh Sivan's Asoka, despite the fact that he was the filmmaker who gave her her first starring role (in Terrorist), one that brought her both local and international attention and instant stardom. And then, for all the fuss she makes about being selective and fussy about the roles she takes, she will go ahead and sign up for an itsy bit part in George Lucas' Star Wars film Return of the Clones. ''You know, it really is about instinct, all these choices and these decisions,'' she says brightly. ''And up until now, I haven't made any decision I drastically regret, so I think I'm doing just fine, thank you.'' To give the devil its due, Dharker has achieved more than most other 26-year-olds. Right now she has a job in London, an international agent, and she regularly travels across the globe promoting her clutch of films at international festivals. She has admirers in Hollywood stars like John Malkovich and Samuel Jackson, who were both so impressed by her ...