Katy Mirza

Young Katy, an aspiring graphic designer in 1972-73, was working as a receptionist at the London Hilton hotel when a Playboy Club employee saw her and asked her to audition. After meeting Hugh Hefner, Katy become a Playboy "Bunny" in 1973. Katy, the daughter of an income tax officer, was born in Aden as Katiya. In the 1960s, her family moved to the UK. Fame and stardom brought Katy to Mumbai. She featured in Ramesh Bhal's Kasme Vaade, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rakhee. Katy played Ruby, a politician's personal secretary, in the controversial film Kissa Kursi Ka (1978). Katy never made it big in Bollywood but there were many rumours about her perceived closeness with the likes of Hussein bin Talal, the then king of Jordan.For the most part of the 70s, Katy adorned magazine covers and centrespreads. It was rumoured that she had her breast size surgically reduced by ten inches. Columnist and novelist Shobhaa De had described it as "Operation Bust"De had written in the "Eyecatchers" section of India Today magazine in 1978 about Katy's "well-publicised operation to reduce her bustline by ten fulsome inches". Calling it "Operation Bust", she had said Katy had emerged "slimmer, lighter and with a big load off her chest".Katy had been mentioned in Sudeep Chakravarti's novel Tin Fish, which was published in 2005. Her photographs were a part of the photo essay book India: Then and Now, put together by Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Vir Sanghv.Lore has it that the size of her breasts were surgically reduced by 10 inches. She didn't retaliate. Anyway what the hell, practically every magazine - the glossies as well as their country cousins - were tripping over themselves to feature her on the cover. Sold-out issues were guaranteed. And the lady didn't ever segue into the coy mode or coin catchphrases to boost her sex appeal, no instaquotes on the lines of "jo dikhtahai woh bikta hai." The story of Katy Mirza, indeed, is the stuff that biopics are made of today. Snag: the pieces in the puzzle would have to be imagined or researched extensively. All that's known categorically is that the daughter of an income-tax commissioner once studied graphic design in London. A U-turn next: a job at the city's Hilton Hotel where she was spotted by the roving scouts of Playboy magazine, whose centrespreads were the prime source for X-rated entertainment in print.The magazine's Bossman Hugh Hefner, yesteryear's closest version of Donald Trump, auditioned the Hilton employee. And a Playboy Bunny was born, posing for the centrespreads frequently reserved for winners of beauty pageants and top-of-theline models. It's a swifter-than-a-blush stay in Bunnydom. Perhaps that impelled her to think Bollywood, or perhaps some filmmaker made her an offer she couldn't refuse, only to realise that there are no free offers in any show town. Her contemporary, Persis Khambatta, couldn't quite make whoopee at Bombay's studios, and sought to 'star trek' to Hollywood. Still Katy wasn't Persis, she followed her dream only to be ghettoised as a starlet. Employed purely for the titillation quotient in A and B-grade movies - take the Amitabh Bachchan-Raakhee breezer Kasme Vaade, the politically controversial Kissa Kussi Ka, the Vinod Khanna-Reena Roy crime drama Jail Yatra and Chadhi Jawani Budhe Nu in Punjabi - here was a stairway to no-exit. Chalo London again. Appearances in episodes of the TV series The Garland and The Magician of Samarkhand are cited.The grapevine of those Bunny days suggest a "closeness" to Hussein bin Talal, the King of Jordan. Subsequently, she fell in love with a man of Pakistani origin, who runs The Lahore Kabab House in East London. They chose not to marry. The Katy Mirza story wound to a quiet, undramatic end. Whether it was a happy one or a somewhere-in-her heart a disappointing one, I'll never know.By the way, unbeknownst to many she would model frequently and once late at night, travelled all alone in a bus from Bombay to Pune to shoot for a scooter ad.She is survived by her son Feroz Mirza who is based in th UK.