Rakhi Sawant Fan Website

Finally, I have arrived. And it’s all thanks to Rakhi Sawant. I have been basking in her reflected glory ever since I appeared with her recently on the ‘Big Fight’. She’s an eyeball-grabber, so they kept telecasting the show - and my sms inbox sizzled like an item number. The messages were divided on gender lines. The men drooled in mock envy.

The ‘mock’ was naam ke vaastey; the envy was as obvious as cleavage. The women sniffed in disdain. There was nothing mock about that either; their envy was see-through. My ratings have gone up so much courtesy this co-appearance, maybe i should put it on my CV.

I was positioned with Spitfire Sawant on one side and, on the other, a Dia Mirza dripping icicles of class rage. In fact, it soon deteriorated into a Rakhi vs The Rest show. Shaina NC clambered on to her BJP high ground, turning her back on her other, high-fashion persona.

The prim Shiv Sena spokesperson, Neelam Gorhe, simply turned her back. She didn’t so much as look at the item girl who had so disgraced the ideal of the ‘chhanshi Marathi mulgi’, or good Maharashtrian girl. Femina editor Amy Fernandes and i tried to maintain journalistic objectivity.

No, correction. As the Fight ‘progressed’ and the class gloves were off, I found myself siding with Rakhi Sawant. Not that she needed any reinforcements. She was perfectly capable of holding her own. The more they turned up their noses at her background and her backlessness, the more she flaunted it. In fact, she launched into her trademark no-holds-barred offensive, arms akimbo, neck out, voice raised. It was like a Big Fight at a common water tap. Delicious.

I like this girl. She’s in your face, and clearly the men would like her to be everywhere else as well - most of all the ones who joke the most about it. While all our actresses assume a lofty demeanour, none more than the recently elevated Shilpa Shetty, Rakhi wallows in being non-English-speaking and lower middle-class. She revels as much in being a hate-object as being a sex-object.

In sniffy circles, it’s always Open Season on Shameless Sawant. And the more shots aimed at her, the greater her notoriety - and hotoriety. You can be sure that this shrill, no-frills persona has also been artificially plumped up like all her famously Botoxed body parts. Yet, there’s a vulnerability behind the bravado. Hers is a spunky rags-to-riches story, eminently preferable to the rags-to-bitches sashaying all over the place.

A guy in the TV audience sent Princess Dia into a paroxysm of disbelief when he demanded, “Dia Mirza, Aishwarya Rai, all actresses do item numbers, then why we are picking on Rakhi?” Why indeed? Because ice-maidens want to show that they can be hot, but hotties must remain cool about their singular talents?

And think about this. We might despair over the vulgarisation of entertainment, but in the real world, women need the Rakhi brand of DNA. If they are to go places, and without having their bottoms pinched all along the way, they’ll need to be grab-as-grab-can-and to-hell-with-middle-class hypocrisy.

Indeed, in this age of if-you-want-to-get-it-flaunt-it, every profession has its ‘item girls’. Flashy, outrageous, breaking traditional moulds with his devil-take-the-hindmost pelvic thrusts, isn’t Lalu the Rakhi of politics. Or Vijay Mallya the Mallika Sherawat of business?

Alec Smart said, “Rain gods, please make it monsooner rather than later.”