August 12th, 2007 
Deepak Modeling, movies, music, television… the players in these glamorous professions are getting younger by the day. Slouched in front of the television set, watching the latest episode of the Zee TV serial Kasamh Se, you haven’t the faintest idea what goes through the head of the actress who plays Bani whenever she does a bedroom scene. True, as a viewer, you don’t have to know. The actress is an actress after all. She has a job to do, and she must do it well. And Prachi Desai, who plays Bani in the serial, does do her job well. You see no sign of the fact that she’s uncomfortable doing these scenes. Because, let’s face it: though Prachi plays a 27- or 28-year-old married woman in the serial, she’s actually just 18 years old. The things she must do for the part she plays are things she’s never experienced in her life. CHASING DREAMS Before you call the Child Welfare Board to rescue this 18-year-old from this situation, Prachi would like to make one thing clear. It doesn’t matter if these scenes make her uncomfortable. First, these are not her only scenes. Second – and more important she’s doing what she’s always wanted to do. Act. Today, Prachi is just one teenager among many in the several worlds of glamour – acting, modeling and singing. Check out former child star Hansika Motwani, for instance. A lead actress at the age of 16, she romances Himesh Reshamiya, a man perhaps twice her age, in Aap Ka Suroor. Then there’s 17-year-old Abhas Joshi, a class XII student who gave up his family life and school-leaving exams when he left his home town, Jabalpur, to participate in Star’s Voice of India contest. The contest is still on, so Abhas isn’t a star, but his dream was always to make it big in the film and music industry, and he’s single-mindedly chasing that dream. At 18, model Anushka Sharma actually lives her dream. Why not? She isn’t an inexperienced newcomer. Having started on the catwalk at the age of 14, she’s been in the business for four years. For most people, these youngsters are just children. ‘Barely out of their diapers’ would be a bit of an exaggeration, but we’d definitely consider them much too young to make the sort of decisions and live the sort of lives that their chosen professions impose on them. [...]
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