Bollywood starlet Sherlyn Chopra is the first Indian to model nude for Playboy magazine, attracting a barrage of abuse on social networking sites. Writer Soumya Bhattacharya talks to Chopra about what it is that drives her to defy convention and looks at what may lie ahead
This is a story about Sherlyn Chopra, the 25-year-old who has become the first Indian to model for Playboy magazine. But this is not a story merely about Sherlyn Chopra.
This is a story about ambition forged on the anvil of desperation. This is a story of a woman putting out on the social networking site, Twitter, naked photographs of herself frolicking in the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles and attracting a barrage of abuse in a country that sent into exile one of its greatest modern artists for depicting a Hindu goddess in the nude in one of his paintings.
This is a story that stands at the confluence of an India at odds with itself, torn between hypocrisy and its opposite.
"I have become the first Indian to pose naked for Playboy and nobody can take away that achievement from me," Ms Chopra said.
"My sister is proud of my achievement. I haven't told anything to my mother, but I think I will visit her and tell her that she has to accept me the way I am."
The 28-year-old actress, who has played some small roles in Bollywood films, said she had visited Mr Hefner and his friends at the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.
"I had fun meeting him and his girlfriends. I am thinking of making him my idol because he lives his life on his terms and conditions. I also live my life on my terms and conditions," Ms Chopra said.
Hugh Hefner set up Playboy magazine in 1953. However, circulation and advertising revenues have been falling with the availability on the internet of free pornography.
Most of India's soft-porn magazines have shut down over the years, as more and more people access pornography over the internet.
That could be one reason why Ms Chopra's decision to appear in Playboy has met a rather lukewarm response in the country, correspondents say.
When I meet Sherlyn Chopra in the suite of a hotel in the western city of Mumbai, she is in a black top, ripped jeans, and suede boots with pencil heels. A Louis Vuitton belt with an oversized buckle cinches her waist.
I ask her how shooting for Playboy was different from other shoots she has done. "We would start at 10:30am after some Jack Daniels and vodka. Never have I done a shoot with such confidence and joy."
The confidence, she says, was engendered by the stylist of the mighty magazine praising her breasts before the shoot got under way. "When I took off my robe, she went wow. These aren't real, you know, I told her. But she said my breasts were beautiful. After that, once I had put on my body make up, I felt like a diva."
She met Hugh Hefner, the 86-year-old founder of Playboy, the day after she arrived at the Mansion.
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