not just a MEAN GIRL: Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay Lohan slipped into town on Thursday, not as the blonde bombshell known for her wild, wild ways but as just another foreign tourist, dark-haired and dainty, out to “make a difference for others”.

The Hollywood actress, famous for being famous, is trekking the country for a BBC film on human trafficking. She visited the Sunderbans on Thursday and has a tryst with a home for victims of trafficking run by a Calcutta-based NGO on Friday.

Cloaked in secrecy, LiLo checked into a Taj Bengal suite on Thursday afternoon. She went unnoticed simply because there was nothing to suggest that here was the star of Mean Girls and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen who has been linked to both celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson and Holly heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio.

Her only celebrity trappings during her night stop in the city? A massage therapist on the ready and a frugal dinner befitting her slender frame.

“I would never have believed that this simple, almost nondescript, girl was the Lindsay Lohan,” said someone who has interacted with her on the Bengal leg of her do-gooder tour.

The 23-year-old who often hits the tabloid headlines for her wild partying, drink driving, drug abuse and alleged bisexuality, has now decided to go from mean girl to good girl with child and women trafficking topping her cause list and bringing her to Calcutta.

“A BBC team got in touch with us saying that she will visit the home to talk to the girls,” said a member of the NGO.

Lohan, who got the idea of doing charity work from Richard Branson, has been “all excited” about her India trip that would give her “something real” to do.

“This is what life is about... Doing this is a life worth living! Oh, and I’m talking about being in India,” was one of her tweets on Wednesday.

If she wants to be taken “seriously”, the child model-turned-actress would do well to associate herself with trafficking from Bengal, for that would add value to her CV.

Almost every village in the Sunderbans has lost several young girls and women to the trafficking network in India. The red light districts of Mumbai, Pune and Delhi are full of Bengali girls. The skewed gender ratio in the villages of Punjab and Haryana ensures that many men are forced to remain single. Girls trafficked from Bengal and elsewhere are “married” to such men, often to more than one man.

She is forced into sexual and physical labour, for she is also made to work on the farm and in the household. There is even a generic name for Bengali girls in Haryana villages: “Paro”.

Lindsay will meet many like them at the home on Friday. They have been rescued, and await rehabilitation.

Hopefully Lindsay will do more than tweet about them.