KAJOL
Its Director Karan Johar on the phone to close friend Kajol (Ranee Mukherji, now Devgan, mock scolding her for being so inaccessible to the media that they’ve been calling him up to beg for interviews with her. In an industry where star cell phone numbers are on the speed dials of most self respecting film journalists, unlike in the West where access is tightly controlled by an array of publicusts, Kajol is an oddity. She’s been part of Bollywood, on and off since the early 1990’s Her Mother Tanuja was a leading star of the 1970’s while her father shomu Mukherji was a well known producers. They are divorced but their grandmother actress shobhana Samarth. Kajol been acting in films while she was still at boarding school at Panchgani, a hill station near Mumbai, and never looked back. Her first movie was Bekhudi and she has shown remarkable staying power by not only acting well into the 2000s but also successfully managing marriage and motherhood. However that is not the only reason Kajol has a niche in New Bolywood. She is a natural a throwback to the old-fashioned days when tweaking or tweezing on facial hair was not derigeur-four heroines. whether it is her famous unibrow or sucking in her stomach when wearing a tight dress, Kajol cannot be expected to cinform. The 1950’s the era of Madhubala and Nargis when stars could get away with completely eradicated in the 1970’s when Amitabh Bachchan bestrode Hindi cinema with his male-dominated movies. Bachchan, who cpuld by turns be angry comic and romantic made female stars almost redundant: In Lawaris he even sang a song in the garb of a woman. It was only in the late 1980’s as the Bachchan era Madhuri Dixit and Sridevi playing significant roles in films, with the accent being on romantic dramas and family sagas. Kajol’s career has been a study in spotaneity as is her acting. She has been part of some of the most definitive movies since 1995. She’s been simran a young
woman living a southhall London caught between a conservative upbringing and liberal inclinations in Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge . She was Anjali the tomboy-turned stylish girl in Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. She was priya the girl caught between two men in the Tamil-Hindi Minsaara Kannavu Then again she was a murder victim in a double role as twins in the harrowing Dushman. And when she returned to the movies after a five year hiatus, with included to Marriage actor Ajay Devgan in 1999 after a surprisingly low-key courtship that lasted five year and motherhood, she has a four year old daughter she did so in the powerful role of a sight impaired Kashmiri girl, Zooni, who falls in love with a terrorist in Fanaa, a classic example of a good role but bad film.
For most filmmakers in Bollywood she is still the No-1, choice. producer Karan Johar was heartbroken when she refused to act in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna Because she did not want to be away from her home and daughter for two months in New York, Yash Chopra insists there is no one to campare with her: his favourite. The actress herself has shown a healthy disregard for the trappings of stardom and resisted the blandishments of fame, showing that life doesn’t end at the arc lights, Just like Julia Roberts who likes knitting and babies she has shown that a modern celebrity does not necessarily have to be narcissistic about life in the public eye.
As a celebrity she has with husband Ajay Devgan, also shown business astuteness being part of profitable endorsements for Tata indicom and Whirpool while refraining from becoming tabloid fodder she is sometimes downright rude to the media and even worse snappish with fans, Is she just a badly behaved famous person or a successful young woman protecting herself and her family from the vagaries of fame? In the case of Kajol no one really knows. And yet that doesn’t prevent them from going to watch her movies. Her performances unstudied and unrehearsed: her imperfections, which she refuses to alter: and her private life a sensible balance of orthodoxy and modernity, make her an icon in an industry which is churning out stars who are crinkle-free reproductions of each other. Add to that the memories of the terrific screen couple she made with co-star Shah Rukh Khan in some of the most fondly remembered movies of the last decade, and there is enough reason for audience to turn out for her. Again and again.