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<h1 class="left">We are shooting Kareena Kapoor Khan for dirty at Mehboob Studio 2 and everyone on set has a boner. The photographer is glassy-eyed, the stylist is salivating, the assistants’ mouths hang open. As for me, I watch her hungrily, wanting to bite her. Sink my teeth into the plump flesh of her arm, chew off a chunk of her thigh, tear into her moreish bum. She’s so… juicy. You can see the curve of her belly under her dress, a lovely soft swell that spanx hasn’t forced into submission. I want to put my face in it.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Bebo is all kinds of woman, and I’m all kinds of gay for her. I’ve met a lot of actresses who could objectively be called hot, but none have made me feel this way. What is it about her? She’s always been beautiful of course, nothing new there, they’re all beautiful, but it’s something about where she’s at right now — 43 years old, face still capable of non-stop movement, wrinkles etched deep, eye bags heavy, easy in her body, incandescent with confidence and vitality. She owns every inch of her skin, and she’s never looked better. She’s absolutely delicious.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">“I only know you as otherwarya,” she says cheekily when I go to introduce myself, “We all stalk you.” I stupid-grin; this does not bode well for me. Bebo is known for being on top of all the goss at all times, her finger permanently on the pulse, forever in the know. “I won't deny it,” she giggles. “Information just comes to me!” (SAME BESTIE) Luckily it’s impossible not to like her, she’s such a relaxed superstar, so goddamn fun to be around. Everything about her is likeable. The silly faces she constantly makes, the way she says “haan?” to tease you, the wisecrack after wisecrack, the casual bitchiness, the gravelly voice adding sex to everything. She’s happy to wear anything the stylist pulls, she’s fine with whatever the hair and make-up team wants to do with her, she’s so chill it’s kind of unreal. She just gives herself over to be imagined and created, and her surrender is irresistible.</h1>

<h1 class="right">With her 23 years in Bollywood, Bebo has been through it. We know who she is, we’ve seen her grow up before our eyes; she’s been in the media glare all her life, and is remarkably well-adjusted for it. We’ve watched her as a precocious princess who says the most delightfully wrong things, as a woman whose body has been scrutinized and debated at every stage in her career. Millennials will remember the size-zero madness around her, a uniquely 2000s spectacle that was just one of the seemingly countless ways in which media made women feel like shit about their bodies. Every story about her at the time wanted to know how she got so skinny, she launched the thin obsession in Bollywood (and her nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar into the stratosphere). It was a…different time, and it’s almost as if she’s making up for it now.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Whether in Netflix’s Jaane Jaan or her new film The Buckingham Murders, which she co-produced and which premiered at MAMI, she shows herself as she is, refusing insecurities and leaning into what we call “imperfections” because perfection is so crucial for a woman to achieve. She names Kate Winslet and Gillian Anderson as her inspirations, as well as Tabu with whom she’s just done The Crew, her next release. “I want to be the only mainstream actor who has the confidence to do this,” she says with her trademark self-possession. “Everyone else still wants to look perfect, hot, amazing, this, that. But I now feel that times have changed, people are ready to accept new things. And they have to accept me like this, exactly the way I am. They have to.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">Aren’t we all obsessed with the way she is? Bebo is the first Bollywood star to appear on the dirty cover, an unusual choice for both the mag and for someone so famous. “I think it's a super cool independent magazine, it is anything but typical, and it has a voice. The whole thing of who’s going to be on what cover because of which film release, I'm over all that. Yes I’m a mother-of-two but what the heck I am still bangin’ and doing things on my terms. It’s really boring to do the same thing again and again. This I feel will be special.”</h1>

<h1 class="right">She refers to herself a lot as a mother-of-two, it’s a big part of her identity. Her kids, Taimur and Jehangir, are six and two. “The reason you get married now is that you want to have a child, right? I mean today otherwise you can just live together. [Saif and I] lived together for five years, so when we took the next step, it was because we wanted to have children.” Her approach to parenting is a grounded and sensible, “there is no right or wrong way.” It’s refreshing, it’s relaxed, it’s very Bebo. “We treat them as individuals, we respect them, and we just let them be. They will figure it out, they will find their own path. Kids are quite resilient, you know.” Oh she’ll be putting the oxygen mask on herself before helping others. “I want to live my life in front of my kids, I want to do everything with them. We have to be happy na, then they will flourish. I’m responsible for my own mental health first.” An Indian mother putting her own well-being before everything else? Stop the presses, call the trolls.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">The one thing everyone says about Bebo is how content she is with her life now, surrounded by love and with nothing left to prove. She admits she’s zen, and “sometimes bored, on all these interviews and talk shows.” Growing up in the first family of film comes with its own unique set of mindfucks, but Bebo refuses to talk about her struggles. It’s a wise choice, to defer to her privilege. “No one’s interested in hearing about that, it’s not like a person coming from a small town and making it big. It doesn’t make good copy, my story.” She knows how not to sound like an entitled nepo baby, I’ll give her that.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">But then Bebo has always known who she is, it’s one of the things that draws people to her. Her confidence in herself, her self-belief, it’s a special, curious thing that inspires envy and imitation. “I've always been very confident, I don't know why. I have that gumption. I have that drive. Twenty years ago I was making statements like ‘I am the best’. But I feel that's what got so many people to believe in me. I have no regrets.” If she’s been faking her take-me-as-I-am, main-apni-favourite-hoon personality, I applaud her for her consistency over the decades. “I'm the kind of person that the more you know me, you know that I can't be fake,” she insists, “I’m too transparent, what I think or feel is just there on my face. I don't know any other way. Because I have never bothered about what people say. I really don't care.”</h1>

<h1 class="right">I believe her, to a point. She certainly doesn’t have that carefully curated image that top actresses craft these days, and credits her state of mind to her ability to draw boundaries. “Now especially, actors have to keep saying something or the other. I can’t. I just cut off. Otherwise I wouldn't have lasted this long, I would have just have wilted in this competition, this pressure, the comparison of this look and that look, now so-and-so’s on the rise and I have to look young, so-and-so is doing this or that brand or is a global face. I can’t. I'm done.”</h1>

<h1 class="right">It's a little annoying how sorted she seems, how at peace with herself, and I tell her this. She laughs apologetically, and says she’s really a very emotional person, which perhaps people don’t see. “I'm very attached to my family, my kids, my husband, my five friends. That's it. That's my life. I need my people. My spot boy has been with me from my first shot. People who come into my world, I don't let them go and they don't leave. That’s why I'm not at every single party. I don't feel the need to be doing that. Being at parties, making friends, socialising. I don't want to.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">It's pretty obvious that younger actresses are trying to recreate some of that Bebo magic in their own personalities (or lack thereof). Nobody comes even close. She is just compulsively watchable, you want to rest your eyes on her and her ever-moving face, and the camera adores her. Stardom, you see, is so much more about personality and charm than talent or performance. It seems almost unfair that Bebo has all of these in abundance.</h1>

<h1 class="left">“You have to find yourself, you know, find your individuality. Find that one thing you want to own about yourself and never lose it.” Her face turns wicked in that way we all know so well, her eyes twinkle, “Y’all are still saying that I should be on the cover of dirty, na? That means there has to be something that's kept this chick going. I’ve still got it, I’m still hot.” She is so fucking hot, and now that she’s reminded me of it I’m tuning out her voice and right back to staring at her, my teeth aching, looking at that ripe, flushed, freckled cheek, wondering what it would be like to take just one bite.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Editor-in-chief and Creative Director: Kshitij Kankaria</h1>

<h1 class="left">Photographer: Rid Burman</h1>

<h1 class="left">Managing Editor: Anurag Sharma</h1>

<h1 class="left">Hair: Mitesh Rajani</h1>

<h1 class="left">Makeup: Sandhya Sheka</h1>

<h1 class="left">Stylist: Kshitij Kankaria</h1>

<h1 class="left">Assistant stylist: Karishma Diwan</h1>

<h1 class="left">Production design: Risha Shetty & Satya Shekhar</h1>

<h1 class="left">Art Director: Suprit Parulkar</h1>

<h1 class="left">Digital Editor: Meghna Yesudas</h1>

<h1 class="left">Production: Imran Khatri Production, Aaliyah Ladhani, Keyur Lakhani</h1>

<h1 class="left">Beauty Partner: Tira</h1>

<h1 class="left">Jewellery Partner: Her Story</h1>

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