ACTRESS MOBBED

Despite her ‘friends with benefits’ equation with Salman Khan and a dream debut opposite him this Katrina Kaif look-a-like has not managed to make any headway in Bollywood. While she is still invited to perform at award shows, courtesy her ‘connections’, Zarine Khan has to depend totally on her mentor and his buddy’s for role handouts. The good thing is she seems to be in demand in the small town circuit for special appearances which the girl reportedly has to depend on to fund her rather expensive needs. This time the actress had a scary experience which left her shaking to her well-manicured toenails. In Bhopal to cut the ribbon of a store the actress arrived at the scheduled 2 pm time and was supposed to leave by 3.15 flight back to Mumbai. But once the launch was over which actually took just fifteen minutes the crowds gathered at the store refused to move calling out the actress’s name again and again.

When Zarine refused to go out to make an appearance (as that was not part of the deal) the crowd of men (some local strongmen) got miffed and the cheers changed to catcalls and wolf whistles and unmentionable expletives. The ruckus got so bad that the nervous security guards of the shop could just about prevent the insistent men from barging into the store. Even worse with just about half an hour to make it to the airport the actress became very nervous and had an exchange of words with the owners for putting her in this scary predicament and insisted they call the cops. But the owners (apparently not wanting to involve the cops who they said would take money) offered the poor girl cold drinks and requested her to smile and pose at the men standing outside. The tamasha continued for some more time till the actress finally agreed to come out and as directed, Zarine greeted everyone and requested them to clear the way so that she could leave to catch her flight but was only allowed to go to her waiting car after she said a few dialogues and shook hands. Surrounded by an excited group of men screaming out her name the actress when finally in the car started shivering and howling. She missed her flight but apparently she is more pissed at reports that the organisers were in cahoots with the men and the tamasha was staged to get more publicity.