Calcutta, April 28: She says you can always find her at shopping malls.

Nidhi Mohta, a 22-year-old student of Bhawanipur Education Society, wants “to be just Nidhi”.

“I want to have a personal identity. I don’t want to be known by any surname,” she says.

“I want fame. I want money. I can take up any work ? I can enter films, I can be a singer, anything, provided it’s good work. But whatever I do will be a gift for my parents, especially my father,” she adds.

Nidhi hangs out the whole day, having a good time ? “can’t stick to home” ? and comes back when she pleases, though always before dark.

She’d rather be caught dead than badly dressed, and if she raises some neighbour’s eyebrows in Karunamoyee’s cheek-by-jowl flats, she does not care. “Bolenge to bolenge. I am not scared,” shrugs the Indian Idol fan.

Her father, she says, is quite a liberal man as fathers go, particularly for a Marwari.

J.K. Mohta, a businessman who lives with his wife, mother and three daughters in a Salt Lake housing estate, does not believe in imposing limits on his children.

“He doesn’t believe in only boys earning and girls marrying. There are no restrictions. He has never asked me to get married. He has not asked my elder sister either. She is 24 and a textile designer who works in an export firm. We are allowed to do anything and wear anything,” says Nidhi, in an orange sleeveless knitted top and white pedal pushers. “He says we can study till the end of our lives.”

Nothing is a problem ? provided she sticks to her “limits”.

Nidhi explains: “I would not wear a noodle strap because I wouldn’t wear something in which I won’t be able to appear before my parents. I don’t go to nightclubs either because I don’t feel like. I would rather go to a movie or shop with my friends,” she says. “But we go out on special days, for dandiya or the 31st.”

She, like her sisters, loves to dance. “Very much.”

On certain evenings, the sisters dress up in trendy clothes, put on make-up, turn on the music and dance in the room they share. “It’s better than any night club.”

She explains the limit theory a little more. She would marry, certainly, but her father will choose the man. “That is the only thing I will do according to his wishes. He will be a better judge of a person.”

But if that man wants dowry, “my father will go and kill him first”, she laughs.

If she falls for someone outside the community, it will perhaps not be easy? Nidhi is silent, but her mother answers. “Aisa karegi hi nahi (She’ll never do anything like that).”

Nidhi does not care too much about politics. Even if she did, she does not have much of a choice as her name is not on the voters’ list, a problem faced by many of Salt Lake’s young.

Nidhi, who likes talent shows on TV and finds soaps stupid, is a trifle confused. “Maybe I will work, save some money and go for further studies. I want to leave this city,” she says.

But while she makes up her mind, there’s much shopping to do.