There are people who judge girls for doing swimsuit rounds and shoots, but the fact is that you need an extremely voluptuous body and tons of confidence to pull that off.

Kyra Dutt, a Bengali from Kolkata, is one such. She first featured in the 2013 calendar of Kingfisher and is now playing a Calendar Girl in Madhur Bhandarkar's film titledCalendar Girls.Much like her character of Sharon Pinto in the film, she too came to Mumbai with dreams in her eyes. Having been a real-life Calendar Girl, gave her an edge and a deeper connect with the film. Excerpts from a quick conversation with the real-life Calendar Girl:

What did it mean to become a Calendar Girl?
I was modelling in Mumbai and was at Arjun Khanna's party when Atul Kasbekar walked up to me and asked me to come and audition for the Kingfisher calendar. I had never done a swimsuit shoot before, but was excited as it involved going to exotic locations and shooting. We were in South Africa for two weeks and shot across several cities at different exotic locations.While Mr Vijay Mallya came for the launch, he was never there for the shoot.But he was the person who would select the final pictures that went into the calendar. It's great to be a part of the calendar, as it reaches the who's who of the corporate and social world and people get to see your pictures with your name. I got Madhur's film as a result of that.

Any interesting experience that you can tell us while shooting the calendar.
We were shooting in Kruger in this wildlife resort. We were given these little villas and the main reception was a big villa in the centre. So can you imagine the ranger would need to come and pick you up otherwise the lion may just eat you on the way. There was this nice open shower where I was taking a shower, when I heard a lioness and I thought it would come and attack me, but then I came to know that there was this one lioness in the reserve who had lost a mate and thus had been crying through the night. But it was very creepy and scary. It's really tough being a Calendar Girl. There was this one shot when I am supposed to look all sexy standing below a shower. We were shooting at 4am and it was freezing. The water was ice cold and I was dying, but I had to behave as if it was really hot and I was enjoying my shower. Then there was this one girl amongst us who had a good body but somehow in her head she thought that she had to lose weight. So she went through this dangerous powder medical diet. Atul Kasbekar would always tell us that eat healthy as he felt that swimsuit models need to be voluptuous-looking and not skinny. But she would have this sachet with water and would start fainting and her rib cage started showing and she looked gross.