Rasna girl Shreya cools off at a city hotel. Picture by Aranya Sen

Jump into the elevator and press the button before anyone else has a chance. Shreya Sharma just loves doing that. For someone whose rise has started early (read: age three), a swift and smooth ride to the top has to be something of a habit.

The new face of Rasna soft drink concentrate belongs to a bubbly seven-year-old who stopped by in Calcutta on Wednesday.

Exams at Lokhandwala Foundation School are over and it is vacation time. Having scored an A+ and a proud 90 per cent in “favourite subject” mathematics, Shreya is spending all her time in front of the camera and behind the microphone.

Known in cable homes around the country as Sneha, Prerna’s daughter in Kasauti Zindagi Ki, she is already a veteran of half-a-dozen top-of-the-line product ads. But on this vacation, she has registered a few other firsts.

“I went to Switzerland in an aeroplane,” Shreya purrs, playing with a cushion in her Peerless Inn room. The first long flight in her short stint in stardom also took her to her first film shoot. “I am Ajay (Devgan) uncle’s daughter,” she mutters. But it was the heroine of Benaam with whom she really hit it off. “Bhoomika (Chawla, of Tere Naam fame) aunty and I used to play catch-catch when she did not have a shot,” she announces.

With work only in the morning, there was plenty of time for play — cricket, tennis, football... “Ajay uncle would sit in silence. He played only football,” reads the disapproving report card from the hero’s screen-daughter.

Though Shreya had heard of his star status, she did not balk. After all, she had shared camera frame before with another Bollywood top gun, Sunny Deol. “In the Lux (undergarment) ad, Sunny uncle pulled me up with his left hand.” But “the shooting was just for three-four hours”, adds mother Ritu, who accompanies her everywhere.

Shreya does not remember much about her first encounter with the lights-camera-action call four years ago. She had auditioned and got a chance to face Anupam Kher in the hit children’s show Say Na Something on SABe TV. “He gave me a chocolate,” is all she can volunteer. Even then, she knew Kher as the “jailwale uncle” she had seen on TV. Which film was that in? “Woh to pata nahin (That I don’t know),” comes the disarming answer.

Since then, though, Shreya has picked up a lot of filmi facts. Main Hoon Na, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai… she rattles off in one deep breath. There is no missing the message — move over Deol and Devgan, this little lady is a one-man (Shah Rukh Khan) woman.