Anatomy Lesson

But the story isn’t about the film star. It’s about the woman quietly waiting for Sen to finish walking through the faux forest so she can give her shot, collect the money and get out. It’s about 25-year-old Jasmine Dawda, one of Mumbai’s foremost hand models.

Dawda’s been waiting her turn inside a crammed make-up room since 9 am (five hours ago). She’s already read more than half of her Barbara Taylor Bradford and the Kenstar cooler’s running close to dry.

Eventually she makes it down, removes the protective woollen mittens and twists and flicks her bejewelled hands for the camera. When Sen’s jewellery ad is released, it’ll be Dawda’s long, acrylic topped fingers—nails manicured to the same length as Sen’s—on screen.

In jingle world, even a true blue beauty queen’s hands just aren’t good enough to sell expensive rocks. That’s where folks like Dawda come in. And it’s not just hands. All sorts of body part shots are outsourced to second-tier models—everything from hair, hands, feet, back, even underarms (think Rexona).

Unlike big ticket Bollywood endorsers who cost crores, substitute models don’t cost beyond five digit figures and are perfect to get the groundwork done. ‘‘You’re not going to get Yana Gupta or Sanjay Dutt to stand around for hours to get the lighting right. You need someone else to do the set-up,’’ says art director Mona Ahuja.

For wannabe actors, it’s a way to make the extra buck while trying to make it to the small or large screen and circumvent libidinous hotshots and their gaseous promises.

It’s worked for Sheel Rai. Right now, the 27-year-old’s in the middle of shooting for the Aamir Khan-starrer Rang De Basanti. He plays a revolutionary, and yes, he has dialogues. He’s also scheduled to play the second lead in a TV serial.

But Rai’s road began with modelling, of the faceless kind. Last year, his well-built, over-six-ft frame doubled for Sanjay Dutt in a Godrej chicken ad. ‘‘I did everything he did, flexed my muscles and everything. But when the ad came out, you couldn’t see me at all,’’ says Rai. The money, however, is good and regular, plus there’s ample time to scout for auditions.

It’s so comfortable that Geetanjali Roy insists she’d rather do this than be in movies at all. For the past eight years, Roy has been earning a living off her hair. Her locks are an aberrant case of truth in advertising—in adspeak, it’s velvety soft, runs down to her lower back and in the tradition of the best Indian hair, is jet black. The mother of one is not just a human wig, though.

The 28-year-old from Assam has done full frontal gigs as the Ashirwad masalas mother, the Mother’s Recipe bahu, the Rasna Double Magic mom, even the Garnet plywood secretary. ‘‘And it’s all because of my hair. It’s my greatest asset,’’ she says. Her hair’s been featured in ads for Nihar oil, Clinic All Clear, Nyle and… you get the picture. Roy’s family’s just moved into a new two-bedroom apartment clustered in a high-rise in north Mumbai. Roy, her cinematographer husband and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter have been here less than two months.

Despite the almost decade-old experience, Roy has unfeigned admiration for the source of all her good fortune—model coordinator Anita Israni, who she also alternately refers to as her godmother. Israni inducted Roy into modelling after reassuring her sceptical family of the viability and decency of the new occupation. For the trouble, Israni makes a cool 25 per cent. From a stuffy suburban Mumbai office above a nursery, she runs a family operation—one of the city’s most successful model coordinators.

A folder inside her locked desk holds the key to various sorts of modelling careers. When Israni gets a request for a body part model, she goes through the selection of portfolios—a drop in the ocean of the more than 15,000 models in her books.

‘‘For first-timers, it’s all about the portfolio and the first impression. When they come to me, I look at their hands and pay attention to every detail about them. Also if a model’s portfolio shows her in a backless choli then I know she’ll be okay with showing her back in commercials,’’ says Israni.

Looking at Israni, it’s hard to imagine that Elite might have begun like this but Israni’s success stories include actress Rimi Sen and various TV serial stars. One of her most requested body part models is 24-year-old Nilambari Ingle. At just 5’ 2’’, Ingle’s fingers are deceptively long. Her nail maintenance techniques include a monthly home manicure and a total ban on washing. In the last nine years Ingle has also done back and neck modelling, acted in a south Indian film and been in an Adnan Sami music video.

Her latest project is a hand modelling gig for Kellogg’s. Over the course of the two-day shoot, Ingle wore the outsized salwar of the primary model because the camera didn’t catch her even once. ‘‘But you get time to go for auditions and other stuff and get paid Rs 5,000 and above, just for showing your hands on screen,’’ says Ingle.

At more than Rs 15,000 per project, the Sen substitute, Dawda, is right at the top of her food chain. Though a full-time ‘normal’ ramp model and wannabe actress, Dawda makes a large chunk of her monthly income by lending her hands. She started three years ago, and coincidentally, as substitute talons for Sen in an ad for Epson printers. ‘‘I think it’s because we have the same height (5’ 7’’) and body structure,’’ says Dawda. The girl from Kutch—her father owns Prince hotel, one of the few multi-starred hotels in Bhuj—came to Mumbai three years ago as a student of the National Institute of Fashion Technology.

The city’s model coordinators first noticed her, and her special assets, in 2002, when she participated in the The Gladrags Mega Model contest. Since then, ad agencies have attached her hands to the faces of model Shivani Kapoor, actor Karisma Kapoor (‘‘Since she was pregnant, her hands were big when she was shooting for the ad, and they couldn’t use them.’’) and no-face ads for Tropicana juice and numerous jewellery stores.

But the business of making perfect bodies out of rented parts isn’t special effects, per se. ‘‘It’s just cut and paste,’’ says art director Ahuja. ‘‘It’s advertising’s greatest tool.’’ For the jewellery ad Dawda shot with Kapoor, it was more like playing a game of helping hands. The model sat on a low stool right behind the actress and, ‘‘I stuck my arms out underneath Karisma’s shoulders, so that on camera it looked like they were hers,’’ says Dawda.

Morphing works for tight shots, but otherwise there’s the simpler route—you just don’t shoot the substitute model at all. For Ingle’s Kellogg’s ad, cameraman Vijay Tripathi’s lens was trained on a cup of steaming water, while Ingle stood way off focus and stirred. (In the on-air version, there’s also a second-long shot of Ingle’s hands slicing an apple.) The camera didn’t catch her strained face, the unkempt ponytail, her muddied kurta—nothing. ‘‘Only the main model and a big name would get a Mango or a Manish Malhotra, substitute models get Fashion Street clothes in a similar colour,’’ says Ahuja.

For 23-year-old Rahul Singh, the clothes aren’t always the main problem. The Varanasi-born vegetarian eats more than a dozen eggs a day and goes to the gym five times a week to maintain a physique he’s hoping will, someday, land him in the category of Milind Soman. ‘‘In modelling you are either a supermodel or have a Greek god physique. I want to be both,’’ says Singh. But before he becomes the next John Abraham, he’s got more basic problems to tackle—rent and food. So, for the past couple of months, Singh, a Grasim Mr India finalist, has been lending his body for briefs and suitings ads. It pricks sometimes: ‘‘It hurts when I see my body on a big hoarding and my face is not there.’’

It’s a familiar refrain in this sub category between modelling and acting. But then anonymity, like everything else, has its drawbacks. Still, if you don’t think the whole package is good enough for the ramp, take a closer look at your hands, or hair, or neck, or…