Arjun Bijlani and Rati Pandey in Miley Jab Hum Tum

What did an intense proposal on V-Day yield for you? A bride? A groom? At best, a partner? Some young Calcuttans proposed on V-Day eve and landed — surprise, surprise — a role in a serial.

This casting couch was laid out by makers of the serial Miley Jab Hum Tum on Star One. Auditions were done in four city colleges and eight boys and girls had made it to the stage at City Centre. While they prepared their lines, the objects of their PDA (public display of affection) were waiting backstage.

“Calcutta is such a great city. I land here and so many girls are waiting to propose to me,” Arjun Bijlani winked. He is Mayank, “smart, charming and intelligent”. That is the persona the girls would be proposing to.

If Arjun is confident, it is because of the response he had got in his first stop the day before at Indore. “When I got out of the auditorium there was a huge crowd of girls waiting. They wouldn’t let me get into the car. At last when I did, they were banging on the windows. It was thrilling as well as scary, especially as it was 7pm and our flight was at 7.55pm,” grins the youth. The girl he chose as the winner there was “simple and confident”. “She looked straight in my eyes and asked for a hug.”

He is not new to receiving proposals in real life too, he claims, having received quite a few in college. His short reel life, too, has been active. “Why, in last night’s episode itself a guy hit on me,” his grin got wider.

But Rati Pandey has led a quieter life. “No one has proposed to me yet. So it would be quite thrilling,” says the pretty girl, known on the show as Nupur. Didn’t her family object to letting her go around accepting proposals from strangers? “Not at all. Ma told me not to bully any of them.”

What the boys waiting in the wings did not know was that they had a choice of language to propose in. Rati speaks seven languages, including Bengali. “I was born in Assam,” she explained. She accepted it would be tougher on girls to propose in public. “But girls have got a lot smarter now,” she said, drawing on her Indore experience. Among the boys, she was looking for a confident friendly face. “The winning boy and girl from each city would get to be on the show in the post-Valentine week, starting February 23,” said Rati.

The lucky boy turned out to be Sameer Chopra, an in-flight executive in an airline. The girl who won from Calcutta backed out citing family objections due to her impending marriage.

On-screen, Mayank and classmate Nupur have a “cute fight going”. “I think we are going to fall in love,” Rati says matter-offactly. But possibilities are blooming off-screen also. “Who knows, I might find my dream man on the contest,” she smiled.