A still captured from the MMS clip of the song featuring Fardeen Khan and Koena MitraKoena Mitra and Fardeen Khan in Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena

After Kareena Kapoor, Mallika Sherawat and Riya Sen, it?s time for Koena Mitra. The only difference between Koena and the rest is that the Saki babe doesn?t deny being the MMS girl. Before you let your imagination run wild, Koena is not part of some sex scandal but a steamy song from Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena co-starring Fardeen Khan. And like all MMS videos, the hot, hot, hot clip are playing on a mobile phone near you.

But it ain?t no leak this time. In a marketing and promotion gimmick, easily the first of its kind in the country, the film?s producers Pritish Nandy Communications have carefully planted the titillating MMS teaser as a last throw of the dice before the movie?s release on November 18.

While the song promos of the film have been playing on TV for weeks, it?s only now that an MMS trailer of Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena is being made to do the rounds.

And what a clip! The 95-second clip starts off with Fardeen and Koena kissing each other in a room before Mr Khan pushes Miss Mitra on to a couch and starts undressing.

The scene of action then shifts to the bath, where the twosome spends long seconds making love under the shower. Finally, it?s the bedtime story, as Fardeen makes a lunge for Koena and the rest, as they say, is a mix of biology, chemistry and technology.

Despite the furore created by such graphic images, the makers of Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena have no qualms about the strategy. ?We have deliberately used the medium of MMS to spread the sexually-explicit clip,? confirmed producer Pritish Nandy.

?There?s a certain synchronicity since the medium has been used in the country all along for viewing sex clips. So we had held back this particular song to be only flashed through the MMS medium.?

Koena, in the precarious position of being part of a sleazy clip from a film that tries to promote her as the next hot thing in Bollywood, appears to be cool about the hot topic.

?There?s nothing cheap, nothing vulgar about the clip,? she quips. ?Come on, it?s not a personal video or a sex clip in anyway. If I were ashamed of it, I wouldn?t have done the song in the film. Pritish is doing something that has not been done before and he deserves kudos for that.?

But why of all songs was this particular one chosen to be spread through MMS? Koena stumbles at this one. ?I wasn?t told that only this song would be sent across through MMS,? she says.

?Rangita (Pritish?s daughter) said that all the songs will be sent through MMSs and this was just one of them. If only the shower song is being spread, then I wasn?t informed about it. Then again, it is the producer?s choice and it is after all their film. So, I don?t have a say in that.?

If the buzz around the Fardeen-Koena MMS is anything to go by, the Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena team has got it spot on with every other phone flashing the images. ?I know the response has been phenomenal,? says Nandy. ?And it?s not that we are showing something pornographic. The song is very much a part of the film and we are just using a clip from the censored film. Since it is yet to be seen on TV, there is a certain element of curiosity around it and that?s what is working for the clip.?

But then isn?t a high-end phone now in the hands of everyone, starting with school kids? ?I think no medium can be good or bad or have a moral association,? says Nandy. ?Take the Internet, which is the most free and powerful medium today. There you have millions of porn sites and sites which teach you to make a bomb. Yet the Net can also be used for the latest happenings in the world of research and medicine. That MMS has become associated with sleaze is because nobody of any merit has ever used it skilfully.?

For the film?s director, journalist-turned-film-maker Suparn Verma, it?s an MMS con job the makers have pulled off to promote the con film. ?Everyone?s talking about the Fardeen-Koena MMS clip as if it?s some kind of sex scandal and then they discover it?s a song from the film,? says an excited Suparn. ?So it?s like turning technology on its head, making innovative use of a rage doing the rounds. Also, the love-making song has been very tastefully done and is an essential part of the film.?

So how does one get hold of it? ?Wait for it to be sent to you,? smiles Suparn. ?That?s the way it?s been spreading across the country. It?s like the six degrees of separation. Your friend has it from somewhere and before you know it, it?s beeping on your own phone.?

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