The Reluctant Katrina Kaif

Sharell Cook is tall, she’s thin, she’s fair, she has chestnut brown hair. That was enough for Sakaal, the popular Maharashtra daily, to pass her off as Katrina Kaif!

Sharell Cook is tall, she’s thin, she’s fair, she has chestnut brown hair. That was enough for Sakaal, the popular Maharashtra daily, to pass her off as Katrina Kaif! On 10 February, the newspaper ran a story about Kaif taking a ride in a Mumbai autorickshaw. The Bollywood actress, the item said, exited a suburban multiplex after a movie and was forced to go home in an auto because she couldn’t locate her car. Alongside the snippet was the picture of a smiling woman, with a vague Kaif-like resemblance, about to alight from the three-wheeler. Only, the picture wasn’t that of Kaif at all. It was a photo taken from Cook’s popular blog, whiteindianhousewife.blogspot.com, her face cut out and replaced with Kaif’s. Cook, a 35-year-old Australian married to an Indian, has been living in India for the past four years. She says she was shocked when a blogger pointed out the hatchet job. “That picture has been on my blog for several months, it was part of a post I’d written on driving an autorickshaw. It’s offensive, they’ve edited it to look like Katrina Kaif,” says Cook. Samrat Phadnis, associate editor of Sakaal, says someone in his organisation simply made a mistake. A typo is a mistake, this has another name.

Katrina KaifSakaalSharell Cook