Last week, a Mid-Day photographer in Mumbai captured Hindi cinema’s sultry siren Mallika Sherawat in a burkha at the airport. Better known for being scantily clad, Sherawat’s shot became a photographic coup of sorts for the paper. “It became a good picture story,” says Mukesh Parpiani, senior photographer, Mid-Day.

Earlier this month, the newly-launched celebrity magazine OK! India carried exclusive pictures of model-turned-actor Upen Patel lip-locked with girl friend Shamita Singha in a swimming pool. Freelance photographer Kedar Nene, who shot the pictures, says: “They were unaware of the camera.”

And last year, a trainee at the Hindi news channel Channel 7 got exclusive footage of Karishma Kapoor’s Goan holiday with her estranged husband Sanjay Kapoor and their daughter. The trainee dodged security men to hide behind bushes and got pictures of the trio in the hotel swimming pool.

Paparazzi culture seems to have finally hit India. Though the rich and famous have been regularly hunted by the tabloids and, for the last few years, by Page 3 photographers, today the Indian paparazzi are on a new high, buoyed by the ever growing demand for fresh, and preferably salacious, footage by the country’s 24-hour news channels. And now with the arrival of international celebrity lifestyle magazines such as OK!, the appetite for sneak shots of celebs at work or play will only get bigger.

Over the years, the rush for Page 3 matter, a concept pioneered by The Times of India, has spread to other newspapers as well. “At least one regional newspaper has started buying our celebrity stories and pictures,” says Manajit Ghoshal, chief financial officer & senior vice-president, Midday Multimedia, which owns Mid-Day.

The arrival of international celebrity magazines in the country will also drive the rush for exclusive pictures and content on local celebrities. In May 2006, VJM Media Private Limited, owned by liquor baron Vijay Mallya, introduced the Indian edition of UK’s largest circulated weekly magazine OK! in a monthly format. Its second issue offers exclusive pictures of Pamela Anderson’s Malibu mansion (she is posing in it, of course) in addition to photographs (and interviews) of our homegrown glamour dolls ? Malaika and Amrita Arora.

Says OK!’s Mumbai-based editor Sonali Kamat: “We felt the Indian reader was ready for a magazine that is more international than local.” OK! in India, like across the world, will be a celebrity lifestyle magazine. “So whether it is a story on fashion, food, beauty, health or travel, there will always be some celebrity angle to the piece,” says Kamat.

OK!’s rival Hello!, too, is looking for a media partner in India. The magazine’s team approached the Outlook publishing group which has just launched Marie Claire in India, apart from sounding out the Dainik Bhaskar group and others.

The reasons for international celebrity magazines to look at India are obvious. Kamat believes that “we have never been more truly global citizens than now. We are travelling more and are exposed to more international celebrity news than ever before.”

That is not all. Newspaper stories from Page 3 have hit Page 1. “There is a huge demand for peeks into high society life. Small wonder that newspapers have moved away from The Indian Express and The Hindu kind of journalism. Today it is difficult to differentiate between a tabloid and a newspaper,” observes Ghoshal.

Which is why most photographers feel that the paparazzi trend will grow in India. Mid-Day, for instance, has launched a new column called Snaparazzi. Says Mid-Day photographer Mukesh Parpiani: “The intention is to maintain a picture diary of the rare incidents taking place in a celebrity’s life.” For the column, the paper captured the Bachchan family ? Amitabh, Jaya and Abhishek ? walking all the way from their home at Juhu to Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak temple. “We even got Saif Ali Khan with his girl friend and, after some days, clicked him with his ex-wife,” he says. Mid-Day has nearly 12 photographers on its rolls and its reporters are also armed with cameras.

Freelancer Manav Manglani thinks the paparazzi trend may grow as celebrities start avoiding the media. “So one day they might all become inaccessible and we will have to click them secretly.” Rajan Chougule, chief photographer at the Mumbai-based DNA agrees: “The paparazzi culture will grow. Bollywood stars will soon become inaccessible. And that is when we’ll only have the paparazzi.” Chougule should know. He has been in the business for many years and clicked exclusive pictures of Arun Nair and Elizabeth Hurley and Pierce Brosnan when they were in India.

The one hurdle that media specialists foresee coming in the way of a paparazzi culture, however, is money. “Or rather the lack of it,” says Ajay C. Upadhyaya, a veteran journalist and director of the Jagran Institute of Management & Mass Communication. “The foreign media shell out thousands of dollars for a picture. The Indian media are used to cheap content,” he says. For instance, Hello! apparently paid a few million dollars for the pictures of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their new born daughter.

Upadhyay, however, hopes that more and more international tie ups will help set new benchmarks for Indian media companies as well. Still, Pradeep Bandekar, freelance photographer for over 40 publications, is doubtful: “In foreign countries, the paparazzi get paid heavily. Even if they click a couple of pictures they make loads of money. Here even 100 pictures will get us the value of bhendi bazaar.”

Bandekar says he’s chasing celebs 24/7 and knows each one of them personally by now. However, like Kedar Nene, he will be happy if media owners paid them better. “If they pay us well enough to risk our lives to do paparazzi work, we’ll definitely take that risk,” says Nene.

For that to happen, they may have to wait for tabloids like Sun and magazines like Heat, People and Closer to come to India. And then the worst fears of celebrities like Pooja Bhatt may come true: “I may open the window of my house to find someone watching me through the lens.”