She stripped to conquer and soared on the popularity charts.
Mamta `Kool'karni, try what she may, has not been able to move away from the Stardust image which took her topless, to the top in tinsel town. So what, if she claims to be a different person today! For fans and fanzines alike, she is still the very girl who broke to fame with that infamous photograph...

And she is herself responsible for the image. For, the photograph was followed by almost a horde of on-screen antics. From Chudiya Bajaoongi, Prem Gun Gaoongi to Meri Choli Mein Khatmal Ghus Gaya and Rama Rama where she is searching for a lost kurta button clad merely in a top.

Supposedly a change from the topless image? Mamta still prefers to say the opposite.
"I may have signed only a couple of movies in which there were steamy sequences, but they were not vulgar," she asserts.

She has Raj Kuamr Santoshi’s film China Gate coming up where she is essaying the role of Sandhya, a girl who wants to take revenge for her father’s humiliation. And she is very pepped up about it. She talked all about it when we met her and also asked us to keep the story to us. No sir, she wasn’t clad or unclad in scanty outfits as your imagination goes. Mamta was very well clad in a churidar when we met her.

And Mamta sounded very strange, very unlike her usual interviews in the fanzines.
"I was looking sensuous and sexy in the films but definitely not vulgar. But it was basically because of that photograph that people have dubbed me as a sex symbol. Even in the annual poll of many magazines the fans have selected me as the sexiest person in the industry," she sighs. But that's the price you have to pay.

"The fact still remains that I never wanted to become a sex symbol. I just became one. People started writing bad things about me and time and again, I have gone off press."

This time around, Mamta has agreed for an interview provided we do not talk about the Raj Santoshi episode and her alleged liaison and marriage with the much married fight master turned actor, Tinnu Verma.
The Raj Santoshi episode only put her into a lot of trouble when she withdrew all the statements she made in the press by just mentioning that she had never said it at all. So even the press had boycotted her.
"It is all over. Please let us not talk about it at all. I have changed. I have films like Naseeb coming up, apart from China Gate. Let us talk about them," she urges."

Mamta still loves to talk about that number in Ghaatak when she had done the sizzling Koi jaye to le aaye number.
"The best part was that I had choreographed the whole song myself. That was a great achievement for me. I was very happy doing that. There was no choreographer and I had to do it myself. It was a tough task, but the result shows. That was one of the best things in the film. Agreed, that the film did not run only because of that song, but it did give the film a boost," she says.

With an occasional smile revealing her cute dimples, Mamta answered our missives. However, fun loving she may be, but once she gets into her stride, she does not fail to lash out at everybody. When queried about starlet Trishna's pose in the same glossy, Mamta says,
"When I started the trend, it was nice. It was something different. I dared to do it and people appreciated my photograph, because it was shot aesthetically. I do not want to name anybody but the other voluptuous photographs which followed suit, did not reflect that well because the people who posed did not have the same charm and innocence which was there in my photograph.

(The other photographs are Pooja Bhatt in Movie, Varsha Usgaonkar in the Stardust Annual, Farheen in Showtime and finally Trishna in Stardust again) "My innocent face helped my photograph look decent," says she, in reference to Trishna who topped the best of topless pictures.

But what has to be mentioned at this juncture is that Mamta has risen like the phoenix after being the target of the ire of women's organisations which took up cudgels and dragging her to court. She was even being dubbed a ghatan and many stars refused to work with her.

But performance paid dividends. With her films Aashiq Awaara and Tirangaa having had the cash registers ringing aloud, Mamta overcame all the brickbats and the failure of her debut film Mera Dil Tere Liye and has carved out a place for herself in Bollywood from where she can dictate her own terms.

Even her detractors who had earlier refused to act with her recommended to the producers to sign her. Like Aamir Khan in Baazi.
"Mera Dil Tere Liye flopped in Hindi but it was a good hit down South where it was called Nanban (Friend). It broke all box-office records there and it also got me a temple," she grins.

True, for the film crazy fans down here she was an idol and for their idol they made a temple the same way it had been built for Khushboo.
"The fans had built it in Nellore. They even sent me an invitation from them to attend the inauguration, but I refused because my parents told me that it was not auspicious for a person to have a temple in her name. The I read in Sunday magazine that the temple had finally been built," she beams.

Mamta has reason to feel proud. The Khushboo temple, built a year before, has been demolished after the latter's marriage to the much-married Southside star Prabhu, son of the legendary Sivaji Ganesan.

And to imagine that the girl who has a temple to her credit due to her histrionics was even scared of going up on stage during her schooldays! But she was ambitious all right. And that ambition made her write a letter to the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi when she was in Standard V.
"I was very impressed by him and thought that he looked so handsome. I adored him and wrote in the letter that I had collected a lot of his photographs and wanted him to autograph them. I had also written that why was he visiting England when the country had been ruling us for so many years. Everybody at home made fun of me and told me that I would never get a reply from him.

"But they received a jolt when the postman came and personally knocked the door and said that it was a letter from the Prime Minister's office. Rajivji had even sent an autographed photograph along with a letter. I was overjoyed and took the letter and the photograph to my school principal who could not believe his eyes. Everybody in school were overjoyed. I still have that letter framed in my house," Mamta gushes with pride.

But the pride in her has a root.
"I share my birthday which falls on April 20 with Adolf Hitler. But I am not like him. Yes, I am ambitious too, but in a nice way. I have been doing a good deed on all my birthdays. The last time I had been to an old age home, a nun showed me around. I was appalled by the problems of these elderly people who had been discarded by their sons and daughters-in-law.

"The nun thought that it was a filmi visit and did not expect anything. But I was moved by their plight and tore out a cheque for Rs 20,000. The shocked nun thanked me, but I felt that I had just done my duty. When I went home, my parents too were aghast at my step, but felt that I had done the best thing."

Mamta has realised that she had to do everything by herself and that is the reason why she has bought a small apartment, all by herself as well.

And suddenly, you realise that Mamta the person is very different from the actress on screen.
"It is nice to be important but it is also important to be nice," she surprises you now. "I am not at all materialistic and this has been possible only through the various books on philosophy and spirituality which I have read. It gives me a lot of mental relief and has made me change my opinion towards life."

For a girl who has struggled to make it to the top bracket, this is no big statement.
"Life is just a unit test. The bigger exam comes when you go up and face God," Mamta says.

Mamta now says that she would have become a politician if she had not stepped into celluloid.
"I have always done what I wanted to. Once, in Standard two, my teacher asked me as to what I wanted to become when I grew big. All the students replied that they wanted to become doctors or something else. But I said that I wanted to become a politician, because I have always liked being up there and addressing so many people."

Are the partywallahs hearing?

But where does Mamta wish to go from here?
"I want to achieve everything and want to be successful in it. After fifty, I will retire and do something for the society."

- By N Anandhi