Preity Zinta: What Makes Her Special!

Unpretentious, unaffected and unadulterated… Jitesh Pillai tries to capture Preity Zinta's all pervasive effervescence in a personal piece

- Jitesh Pillai

So there she was with a fake pregnant belly strapped on to her. Yakking away 19 to the 1900 in the vanity van parked at the SNDT college grounds. Shooting for her debut Kya Kehna. Meet Preity Zinta Goodenough…

An instant bond was forged. She told us about having shot for a Telugu ad, auditioned for Shekhar Kapur and how she fobbed off ‘friendly advances’ from the industry. Till I had to hush her up saying you can’t say all this in the press. Also, the first time we ate at a tony eatery in Bandra we went Dutch.

Be it New York, Madagascar or Guangzhou, she made that mandatory once in six months checking up on me, finding out if all was well. Talking to me about heartbreaks, betrayals and her new love… None of it is for print of course…

She was lovely truly. Her dimples framing her cherubic face. She was bindaas. She smoked, she declared she’d never have an affair with a co-star and lived up to it. Most importantly, I never heard her viciously tearing apart her colleagues.