The sensuous lilt of the Hindi film song Dilbar Dilbar drifts in the air. Standing behind the camera, Mumbai boy Akshay Dhasade is showing some feminine steps. And mimicking them with practised ease in front is a woman dressed in a tank top and a palazzo, held in place by a cummerbund, accessorised suitably with tiara, bangles and big earrings.

This is no Bollywood wannabe picking up flashy moves but a social worker from Spain who has never seen a Hindi film. Alba Carbonell was set to fly down to India to volunteer at the CG Block-based NGO Prayasam when she was asked if she and her friend Alejandro Mur could do a short film for them during their stay.

The film was to be titled Spanish Guitar. The storyline would revolve around Alba who comes to India to teach guitar at the NGO where one of the local boys, Manish Chowdhury, falls for her. One day he hears of a fight over phone between Alba and Alejandro, who was to play her boyfriend. He tells Alba that all Western men were disrespectful of women unlike Indian men who were far more sensitive. Later Alejandro is shown to fly over to join the NGO himself where Manish gets to know him. When the duo are set to return to Spain, he apologises for having judged Alejandro without knowing him. Alba hands over her guitar to him as a mark of their friendship.

“I knew that I would have to play the guitar in the film. I used to till I was 20. So I started practising. But the dance came as a surprise after I came here,” says Alba, a 38-year-old from Barcelona, who looks not a day older than 28.

Amlan Ganguly, the founder of Praysam, said the dance was a dream sequence, the idea of which came to him on getting a WhatsApp forward from Alejandro. “It was a video clip of Dilbar Dilbar (the version in the film Satyamev Jayate). He said it was a rage in Spain.”

A choreographer was at hand in Akshay Dhasade who had come from Mumbai to train in filmmaking at Prayasam. “I have choreographed in school events and plays but never for a film. They had scared me saying the girl can’t dance. But she could and she was very patient,” Akshay says in Hindi.

Alba indeed had some experience with Bollywood moves. “My sister has been to India a couple of times and asked me to choreograph a Salman Khan song (from the film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke) for a wedding. I studied the moves on YouTube and all of us practised in the park for a month, playing the song on the iPad. People would stare at us,” she laughed.

The six-minute film, directed by Ultadanga boy Shuvojit Saha, will be shown at the Bad and Beautiful Film Festival in August.

Alba picks up Dilbar Dilbar moves from choreographer Akshay Dhasade, also interning at Prayasam. The Telegraph picture