Actress and social activist Shabana Azmi, a self-confessed "non singer", will be heard singing in her forthcoming award winning English film,  Loins of Punjab Presents  . The film has just won the Best Feature Film Award at the 65th Annual First Run Film Festival

"Since I played a person who sings the song Chura liya Hai Dil Ko from the Hindi film Yaadon Ki Baraat , Manish Acharya (film director) was insistent that I should sing the song myself. I am a bathroom singer and have never trained in music, formally," said the National Award winning actress in an informal tete-a-tete on Friday with surfers on Indiatimes chat.

Shabana is not hoping to bag another National Award for her role in the film. She plays a cameo in the rib-tickling comedy where she portrays a New Jersey based socialite who participates in a singing contest named Desi Idol to win thousands of dollars in prize money so that she can donate it to a charity. The film also stars the American-Indian actor Ajay Naidu and the acclaimed actress Ayesha Dharker of Bombay Dreams and Terrorist fame.

The issue of HIV/AIDS awareness being close to her heart, Shabana has just completed shooting for Positive a film made by Farhan Akhtar on different aspects of HIV/AIDS that has been put together by Meera Nair for the Bill Gates Foundation.

When asked what she feels on all big organisations' involvement only with the spreading of awareness about HIV/AIDS and doing very little in terms of actions to curb the dreaded disease, she replied, "The fact that India has realised the human rights to treatment and is making it available at a lower cost, it is a step in the right direction."

Extremely proud to be a part of the Indian film fraternity, Shabana dislikes the term 'Bollywood' for Indian cinema, as it says suggests Indian cinema to be a "poor imitation of Hollywood, which is unjust and untrue."

She adds, "The Indian cinema is the largest film fraternity in the world making largest number of films (more than Hollywood does). It is the only industry that has managed to withstand the onslaught of Hollywood. Globally, I admit, there is a greater recognition of Hindi films with song-and-dance. But it's a long way before we can be accepted in the main stream western world. As the world shrinks and becomes a global village it is being increasingly accepted that cultures have to be understood within their own paradigms rather than on yardsticks of measurement imposed by the East on the western world. Hindi films must be accepted with its song, melodramas clichés. We cannot sanitise it for the benefit of the western world."

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