Bollywood Confidential Read Free Page A

stars she was up against.
    So, as she battled dead skin cells and misbehaving pores, she went over the remaining details Griffin had filled her in on after her mother’s excited outburst at the restaurant.
    There was one aspect that had startled her most:
    No audition.
    She couldn’t believe there was no audition for the role.Only people like Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro (known as Bob in the biz) had roles hand delivered to them.
    Not Raveena Rai.
    But apparently the director, Randy Kapoor, while in Singapore attending an international Bollywood awards show, had seen a commercial she’d starred in.
    The commercial was for a super-absorbent Japanese tampon the length and width of a toothpick.
    The Vagitsu.
    Don’t visualize it.
    Two years before, India had won the Miss Globe crown—similar to the Miss Universe title—for the first time. Indian fever struck Japan, and the Vagitsu Company had approached Miss Globe to star in its ad campaign.
    She declined.
    Apparently, Miss Globe did not want to embarrass her traditional Indian family by appearing in a tampon commercial.
    Raveena had no such qualms.
    After an international casting call, she was flown first class to Tokyo, put up in a five-star hotel and spent a week on a set that was straight out of Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra . For seven days she wore a number of gauzy outfits, shot sultry looks into the camera, and was paid more money than she’d ever seen in her life.
    For her efforts, she also received a lifetime supply of the Vagitsu.
    Truly a fabulous product and now the number one tampon in all of Asia.
    FDA approval is still pending in the United States.
    Anyway, thanks to that commercial, which was stillrunning, Raveena was able to afford a trendy one-bedroom condo in Santa Monica instead of a cockroach-infested studio in North Hollywood, and get presented with a Bollywood acting offer on a silver platter.
    All without auditioning.
    Speaking of the role, she only had a brief sketch of the story. It revolved around an American girl of Indian heritage who grows up without a father. It’s only when her mother is on her deathbed that the heroine discovers her father is very much alive and living in a small village in India.
    Before the heroine can react, the mother offers up another deathbed confession. The father has no idea that his daughter even exists. The mother then conveniently—for the storyline—dies. The heroine, who has never been to India, ends up hopping a plane determined to find her father.
    No mention of whether she gets her malaria shots or not.
    Of course, after three days in India she realizes there’s more than one village in the country. So she hires a tour guide, the hero. The hero and heroine begin their journey across India looking for dear lost Daddy, slowly falling in love and facing many adventures and sticky situations along the way. One of which involves a nasty-tempered camel and multiple molestations by a monkey.
    When the heroine finally reunites with her father, there is much singing and much crying, as the old man is also on his deathbed. However, finding out that he has a daughter gives him the will to live.
    Raveena could play the role in her sleep.
    Beauty routine finally over, she threw on her favoritepink cotton nightshirt, slipped in between the sheets and closed her eyes.
    Call her crazy, but she couldn’t decide what to do.
    Bollywood was so…far.
    It was time to talk this over with her friends.

Chapter 4
    Siddharth was the number one actor in India.
    But he couldn’t care less.
    He was bored.
    High above the trees of Bombay, ensconced in the penthouse flat he shared with his mother and sister, having just returned from a week-long shoot in Mauritius, Siddharth leaned back in the recliner, stretched out his long legs and began flipping through channels on the new flat-screen TV.
    One of his movies was airing on the Zee Network. He grimaced, and it wasn’t from the