What makes Malaika the extreme Bollywood zest girl

What makes Malaika the extreme Bollywood zest girl: Malaika Arora Khan not an actor, never mind the odd itsy-bitsy role in the odd forgettable film. Yet she has lasted in the film industry for over a decade. “I’m pretty much peripheral in terms of Bollywood, but yet in a way, because of the family I am married into, and my songs, I am in Bollywood ,” she says.

She is, rather, Bollywood’s Shakira of “item” numbers, the Item No. 1. A 35-year-old mother of a seven-year-old son, and still the stuff of male fantasy: when she teases a small town in Uttar Pradesh to distraction as Munni in Dabangg, the front-benchers and multiplex janta go wild. She is also, by the way, the producer of Dabangg Malaika will forgive you for letting that fact slip. “With me it’s always the songs... it’s for my “item” numbers that I’ll be part of this country’s cinema library.