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Amber and Dhara have faced humiliation and rejection from the day they were born. Their father rejected them, leaving their mother to face the world alone. In school they were teased and mocked at. As they grew up, society shunned them at weddings, religious ceremonies and on festive occasions. But their mother told them that even if the world shunned them, their biggest advantage is that they are conjoined twins and therefore unique.

Like all young girls they dared to dream. Amber is crazy about glitz, glam, singing and dreams of making it big. Anuj, the music patron of the small hill station they hail from, added colour to their dreams. They ran away with him to Mumbai and Anuj has sold them to a circus owner.

While it remains to be seen how the Siamese twins come out of the trouble they have landed in, Kashmira Irani and Sulagna Panigrahi who play the conjoined twins in AmberDhara are finally out of their eight-month-long confinement and are enjoying their freedom. Their contract required them to stay away from their families and friends and have no contact with the outside world. The only people they could meet and talk to were their co-actors and unit members. What's more, they were also made to live like conjoined twins. "But we didn't mind it at all," says Kashmira who plays Amber. She hails from Pune and was studying for her second year bachelor's degree in Arts when she auditioned for the show. "I always wanted to be an actress but had never imagined that I would end up making my debut in a unique show where I would play a conjoined twin," she says.

It is the same case with Sulagna, a first year commerce student from Delhi who has an Army background. It was her childhood dream to become an actress. "But I didn't know how to go about it. I think it's destiny that I finally landed here and gave my audition and got selected to play Dhara," she says. However, when the duo was selected to play conjoined twins, Kashmira and Sulagana were not told anything about the show or their roles. "We came to know about it a week later. For a moment I didn't know what to say and how to react. But soon I realised that it is a great opportunity to do something really different and unique," remembers Sulgana.

Kashmira says the best things in life come with great difficulty and she was game for the role. Thus started their vigorous training to play and understand the psyche and behaviour of conjoined twins. "I knew it was going to be very difficult but our teacher Ehsan Baksh believed in us. Since we didn't have any acting experience we had to start from the basics and it took us nearly six months to learn everything about acting and conjoined twins before we were ready to shoot," says Kashmira.

But the most difficult part was to live in confinement and not being allowed to meet or keep in touch with their families and friends. "Since our identity was to be kept a secret we were not allowed to meet anyone. We did keep in touch with our families on phone but couldn't meet them. It was difficult to live in isolation for so long," recalls Kashmira.

If living in confinement was not easy, it wasn't easy either to live and act like conjoined twins. "But despite all sorts of problems and pain we managed it. And the day we saw ourselves on television we were really happy," say the happy duo.

"We are enjoying our work and the attention we are getting. Whenever we go out for shopping people approach us for autographs," says Sulagna. But it's not total freedom for them as yet. They continue to live at their old residence and their interaction with the outside world is still limited. But they don't seem to mind it at all. After nothing in life comes easy.

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