10 women who are famous for being infamous

Yana Gupta
The expression 'sneak peek' much favoured by city supplements got a new twist when Yana Gupta pulled off what is now known as Bollywood's Pantygate. She arrived at a charity event in a sexy black number that highlighted her curves. But her wardrobe revealed a little more than what hosts of charity dos bargain for. Yana had no innerwear. She later claimed she had arrived from rehearsals of a dance show, where she wore no inners as her costume was too tight. Yana shot to fame with 'Babuji' item dance in the 2003 dud Dum, and hasn't done much since then. Selected lapse of memory sometimes brings you back in the limelight.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

Payal Rohatgi
When all else fails, start a Twitter war. Payal Rohatgi knows as much. Considering her latest reality TV appearance on Survivor India has seen as cold a response as for the show itself, she sparked off a Twitter war with tarot card reader Munisha Khatwani. Payal called Munisha a 'witch' and accused her of getting too cosy with certain male contestants. Funny that Payal should have a problem with whatever Munisha did. Wasn't she cavorting with Rahul Mahajan in a bikini splash on Bigg Boss?

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

Mandira Bedi
She immortalised spaghetti straps in Indian showbiz. Bedi's trip as the sex quotient on the cricket show Extra Innings has done her more good than a hit TV debut on Shanti, a vamp's turn on Kyunkii Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, or sharing blink-you-miss screen space with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

Cricket telecasts in India, including pre-and postmatch analysis, were a dull affair till Mandira and her spaghetti straps were unleashed on a panel of cricket experts. No one remembered what the experts said but everyone still recalls what Mandira wore. She hasn't done much since Extra Innings, but Mandira proved what it takes to grab eyeballs without batting an eyelid.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

DJ Jenny
Last Independence Day Mumbai-based deejay Jenny wanted to do her bit for the uplift of women. Noble thought - except that when Jenny revealed her plan of action, she was revealing more than what the moral police would love to watch. Jenny posed in the nude with two strips of the Tricolour covering her privates. The pose, we understand, was meant to pitch for reservations for women in the education and employment sectors, although policy-makers driving such issues barely noticed. Those who did notice - including selfappointed moral cop Pramod Muthalik - threatened to blacken Jenny's face. Not that Jenny complained. She has been India's bestknown deejay ever since. That's even if you aren't aware of her music.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

Shweta Tiwari
What does a boring Bhojpuri heroine do when she wants to prove she is as cool as the rest of them? Simple - she strips down to bikini for a bath on reality TV even as the camera laps up her curves. Shweta's bikini bath on the adventure show Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao has been the high point of her career. Her shower in the wild was a hit on YouTube but that's just about it. For all her wet-setting ways, all that Shweta managed to bag was an item number plus a tiny forgettable role in an Aftab Shivdasani dud called Bin Bulaye Baraati last year.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

Poonam Pandey
Last week, Poonam Pandey posted a new set of bikini snaps on her Twitter handle. Putting up sexy stills on her social networking page seems to be her fulltime profession lately, considering not many in Bollywood are willing to give her work. That's despite the frenzy she set off last year by declaring she would strip if India won the cricket World Cup (she never did although India won, but cashed in for months on the limelight that came her way). The whole point being no one was really ever interested if this ex-Kingfisher Calendar Hunt contender stripped or not. Except the moral police who bayed for her blood, which in turn garnered added publicity.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

Rakhi Sawant
For long, no one accepted Rakhi as anything more than an item girl. She did have her hit numbers but was smart enough to know a Bollywood item dancer has limited shelf life - especially at a time when heroines were taking over the booty shake grind. Rakhi chose to reinvent. She raided reality TV with outrageous antics. It didn't take her long to emerge as India's drama queen. Rakhi has survived the game by smartly reinventing herself with a new stunt every time you thought her luck would run out. Audacious declarations such as she wants to marry Baba Ramdev clicked just as her nationally televised wedding hoax, Rakhi Ka Swayamvar. Love her or hate her, you just can't ignore her.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

Veena Malik
Veena Malik has been to Pakistan what Rakhi Sawant is to India, and Paris Hilton to pretty much the rest of the world. Drama queen, limelight moth, media-savvy talker, nude model on glossy covers - we have known Veena as all of these, so what if she insists she wants to be known as a Bollywood actor. Veena's nude photo-op for a lifestyle magazine saw fundamentalists issuing fatwas and her family disowning her. But then, she is no stranger to hounding controversy. Her wild claims that she had warned ex-boyfriend, cricketer Muhammad Asif, against his match fixing tendencies was the first foray. She was also seen cosying up to her Bigg Boss 4 housemate, flop star Ashmit Patel. They will soon star in some vague film called Supermodel. Expect a new wave of Veena antics when the film releases.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

Sunny Leone
The joke that did the rounds during this season's Bigg Boss was 'dhai kilo' doesn't refer to Sunny Deol's haath anymore. Porn star Sunny Leone has given the concept of kilos a whole new buxom spin. Smart PR ensured Sunny's original calling became general knowledge soon as she entered Bigg Boss. This was the first time a porn star was openly participating in an Indian TV show. The idea for Sunny was to tease 'em, leave 'em guessing if the clothes would come off, even as she carried on with an innocent attitude on camera (that's her real self, she insisted).

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today

The game of hogging media space without bona fide reason was really kickstarted in India by Shilpa Shetty, Mallika Sherawat, Rakhi Sawant and Mandira Bedi. These were our first-generation, publicity-savvy celebs that chewed off far more of the headlines cake than their achievements warranted; in the process, they turned grabbing eyeballs into a fine art.

Nupur Mehta
The latest is Nupur Mehta, who played to the gallery by deliriously giving interviews this past week to just about anyone who claimed to be a journalist after a British daily pasted her blurred image on a match-fixing story.

Nupur, whom even hardcore film buffs had a tough time recalling as the itsy bitsy-clad vamp in a Sunny Deol dud called Jo Bole So Nihaal, will now hope for her big Bollywood break on the lines of Sunny Leone, the porn star who put up an innocent-girl act on Bigg Boss only to be lapped up by brothers Bhatt - Mahesh and Mukesh - as the heroine in their upcoming Jism 2. Don't be surprised to see Nupur on next season's Bigg Boss. If she plays it right, she will bag a Swayamvar for herself too. In a reality TV-driven culture where television has to manufacture new celebrities every season, wannabes only need to create news any which way. Anything else, Paris would say, is sinfully boring.

Text by Vinayak Chakravorty / Mail Today