Hyderabad has its own calendar girls!!!

Vijay Mallya’s bevy of bikini-clad beauties in the annual Kingfisher calendar have competition this year — Allu Aravind’s son, Allu Sirish is out with his own calendar featuring a beautiful actress from South Indian cinema for each month of 2010. Ileana, Shriya, Reema Sen, Bindu Madhavi, Kriti, Archana, Mumaith Khan, Nikhita and Madhushalini have all been featured in a limited edition — an exclusive calendar for the first time in Telugu cinema.

Sirish, who plans to distribute it free of cost to a few, says he wanted to publish a calendar with ‘familiar’ faces and so he cast mana Telugu beauties. “I used to follow both Kingfisher and Sports Illustrated calendars, which are very popular. I wanted to come up with something similar, but with known faces. I thought I’d show the glamorous side of actors without vulgarity. It is a limited edition calendar with only 3,000 copies.”
The pictures were shot at Goa and Hyderabad by renowned fashion photographer G. Venkat Ram who shot for promos of movies like Ghajini, Rajnikanth’s blockbuster Shivaji, Boys etc. The ‘calendar girls’ are thrilled with the tasteful photographs and are happy that something like this has come up in the hitherto conservative South. “It was shot very aesthetically without overdoing anything,” enthuses actor Archana.

“The team was professional and there was no compromise on the quality of the shoot. The pictures are very classy and stylish.”

Tollywood’s favourite item girl Mumaith Khan couldn’t agree more, “There are preconceived notions that the South is all about heroes with moustache and heroines with sarees and flowers in their hair. This is a bold initiative and will change the way Telugu actors are perceived.”

Photographer G. Venkat Ram was pleasantly surprised at the professionalism of his ‘calendar girls’,

“This proves that South Indian actresses are ready to sport anything as long as it is aesthetically presented. The costumes were styled according to the backdrop of the shoot. The theme was ‘style’ and the idea was to present the actresses in a sexy yet comfortable pose. Heroines usually worry about exposure in movies as it might harm their image. But here they were cool and co-operative since it was a limited edition that would go only to people who admire beauty.”