Shabana in Munirka goes Kareeb to stardom as Neha

And she just can’t stop praising Shabana, her favourite. “I have been watching her since she started appearing on television (on DD Metro’s filmi roadshow, Public Choice),” she says. “She was good then; she carried her western clothes and shoulder-length hair really well. But in Kareeb, she’s definitely looking better in salwar suits. I never miss the Kareeb songs whenever they are on TV.”

Twenty-three-year-old Shabana got her first big break courtesy Amit Mehra, a producer with the now-defunct JAIN-TV. That was in 1994-95, when she was “a spontaneous and innocent-looking Delhi girl who came dressed in jeans and T-shirt with her mother for the shoots”.

Mehra turned her into the sexy hostess of the UB Group-sponsored Top of the Froth, a countdown show that took her to the country’s leading nightclubs in peekaboo outfits. Recalls the producer: “Beer baron Vijay Mallya wanted someone sexy, but not without a touch of innocence about her. Shabana fitted the bill beautifully. She was fresh, she was bubbly.”

But Mallya didn’t approve, or so says Mehra’s talent-spotter, Varun Chopra, and the serial had to be canned after two episodes. That didn’t stop Mehra from backing Shabana. “She was no great shakes, but she tried very hard. She was very focused and very free in front of the camera,” he explains. So, she replaced ramp model Manini Dey for the last two episodes of the Henko Super Show, again a film song-based programme produced by Mehra for Jain-Tv.

It was to be her ticket to Naveen Batra’s Public Choice, which got her only Rs 3,000 per day for an awesome schedule involving three-four episodes being completed at one go, but at the end of it, the new kid on the small screen became the face that would be appropriated, and kept under wraps, by the maker of 1942: A Love Story.

Today, Batra is exulting. He, after all, unwittingly launched Bollywood’s most-hyped new find. “She was really good in Public Choice, so I repeated her in Dhoom Dharaka and Awaaz Nai, Andaaz Wahi, both 13-episode serials on DD Metro,” remembers Batra. But will this doe-eyed Delhiite, who has read Michael Caine’s book on acting from foreword to index, set the big screen on fire when the love story set in the Valley is released on July 17? In a year of flops, it may be hazardous to wager a bet.