Noted Bollywood actress Amisha Patel was in town to inaugurate Seamless SeamEdu Academy (SSA) on Senapati Bapat Road. And she was totally taken off guard when a young artist named Prashant Sinha presented her with a cartoon caricature.

"It is much better than the original!" she exclaimed. The Gadar girl posed with the caricature with pleasure. Amisha was on the dais with 93-year-old Daji Kaka Gadgil from PNG Jewelers, Saurabh Gadgil and Prof Kedar Nigavekar of SSA.

SSA is a three-storey complex, which houses the Toolbox Animation Studio, Broadcast Media School and Jewelry-Gemology Information School.

Sinha was specially invited by SSA to make the caricature on this occasion. Using charcoal pencil he completed Amisha's caricature with some comic touches in about 15 minutes. Sinha then handed it over to Patel to a huge round of applause from the audience.

Ignored art form

"I love and promote caricatures, as it is still an ignored form of art," Sinha told MiD DAY. It is difficult to draw a cartoon caricature of a beautiful girl like Amisha, while it is always easy to draw cartoons of ugly people, he opined.

A fine arts graduate from Sayajirao Gaikwad Art School from Baroda and presently working as an in-house artist for Malaka Spice at Koregaon Park, Sinha has drawn caricatures of many celebrities including Tanushree Dutta, Jackie Shroff, Shobha De and Dilip Vengsarkar.

Amisha stole the show in a black T-shirt and blue jeans. She went down memory lane and shared some of her sweet memories about the city.

"I am partly a Marathi, as my grandmother was a Gokhale who lived on Prabhat Road near Deccan Gymkhana," she said.

She spoke enthusiastically about her role in Chatur Singh, where she stars opposite Sanjay Dutt.
"This is the Indian version of Pink Panther series, where Sanjay plays inspector Chatur Singh and Indian Inspector Cluso," Amisha said.

"I would like to play a negative role and also like to act in historic films," Amisha added.

- Mid-Day