Sunidhi Chauhan ki jawani

She sent temperatures soaring with Sheila ki Jawani and very soon she will be hotting things up with her new duet with Latino theartthrob Enrique Iglesias.

Sunidhi Chauhan has never had a dearth of chartbusters and fans. Her every performance only sees her expanding her fanbase.

And we won't be surprised if our Indian Shiela wins thousands of Spanish hearts after her duet with Enrique is released. The queen of item songs speaks to CS about her fan following:

Shiela shining
I am enjoying all the attention post Sheila. Nowadays, everyone refers to me as Sheila instead of Sunidhi (laughs). Though I have sung a number of hot item songs, this one was perhaps the naughtiest. I don't like the term item song though, I prefer referring to these numbers as special songs. I am lucky that I get to sing the most important songs in a film. I performed Sheila Ki Jawaani recently at Indore, and the crowd went crazy.

In my jeans
A few years back I had gone to Kolkata to perform for a show. The local party hadn't seen my pictures before so when I entered the venue no one recognised me. Later, when someone introduced me to them, they were shocked. They had imagined Sunidhi to be a 30-40-year-old woman in a sari, and here I was dressed casually in denims and a tee. It wasn't surprising because I was a bit of a recluse till then. But now thanks to Indian Idol, people are familiar with my face.

Fan-tastic
I remember a concert in Hissar, Haryana, where we had a crowd of around 50,000 people. I was going to sing my hit numbers, and Beedi was a charttopper at that time. It was supposed to be the second last song on the show. But people started demanding it from the time I stepped on stage. Finally, I had to give in. The sight of 50,000 swaying heads and hands from the stage gave me a huge high.

Likewise, I was doing a show in Sydney, Australia and I saw a group of foreigners singing Ishq Kabhi Kariyo Na with me. That surprised me a lot as they seemed to know the entire song. But it was also a fabulous feeling. However, my biggest fan is an Indian in Nairobi, Kenya. He's got my face tattooed on his arm. I think that's the biggest compliment anyone can give me.

If you ask me about my favourite song, I wouldn't even be able to list out my top five. All my songs are close to my heart. I am a bit of Sheila, a little of the Desi Girl, and have a Mast side to me. I am lucky that leading actresses like Rani Mukherjee, Urmila Matondkar, Kajol, Bipasha Basu have danced on my numbers. And the latest is Katrina Kaif. I am sure that no one will forget Katrina's sizzling act for a long, long time.

Who: Sunidhi Chauhan
What: Talking about her fan following
Where: At a studio