Tanvi lives in Goregaon, a far-flung suburb of Mumbai, and studies in Dr S Radhakrishnan Vidyalaya. Her mother Sharmila works as a technician in Hinduja Hospital while her father Ganesh works with the Union Bank of India.

Slumdog was Tanvi's first brush with filmdom.

"I never thought about acting before," Tanvi tells us. "My uncle Sunil Lonkar is a model co-ordinator. He came to know about the Slumdog auditions from our casting director Lovleen Tandan. He told me to try out. Lovleen gave me some dialogues for which my mother taught me some facial expressions, and I auditioned. But Lovleen asked me do it differently. She asked me to act naturally and pretend that this happened to me. She made me do the scene over and over again until I got it right."

In the film, however, the scene that she auditioned for was edited out.

In the video: Tanvi shows off her Kathak dance

Text: Patcy N | Video, Photographs: Uday Kuckian

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