It’s the Battle of the Bong Babes on the newsstands this month with Dia Mirza, whose mother was Bengali, glamming it up on the front cover of Harpers Bazaar in a patterned bikini and Bipasha Basu fronting Marie Claire in a sophisticated white rouched and black-belted dress.
Currently picking herself up from the lacklustre Hum Tum Aur Ghost, loosely based on the Ricky Gervais comedy Ghost Town, Dia is very much looking forward to Shoebite, in which she’ll star with Amitabh Bachchan and Sarika in a story about an old man rediscovering himself and what’s important in life. She’s decided to become more choosy about the roles she plays. “Now I am in a position where I am financially comfortable, I am not working in a film to get extra money,” she explains, “I am working in a film if I want to be a part of it. I’m in a position today that if I don’t get the right role, I can sit at home for six months and not do a film that I don’t believe in.”
Bipasha, meanwhile, is in Goa filming Dum Maro Dum. Appropriately, at a time when the UK is gripped by the murder trial surrounding the suspicious death on a Goan beach of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, Bipasha says she wants to highlight the escalating crime rate in the resort. “I’m really concerned about what’s happening in Goa,” she says, “It’s so easy to let an underbelly thrive in Goa. Female tourists are the main victims. In Goa, they end up trusting the wrong people. We must protect them.”
