July 6, 1998

Sexy. Saucy. Spontaneous. Now this glamour child has blossomed into a fine actress.

By Nandita Chowdhury

Say what you want about Kajol Mukherjee, just don't call her a bimbo. Understand, this isn't because you're anxious she might be offended. It's just that it isn't true. Don't also merely categorise her as a sex symbol, albeit one with green eyes so alluring that married men wish they weren't. This at least is true, but there is more to Kajol than that understated sexiness. She's an actress.

Actresses in Bollywood aren't expected to carry a film alone; they prance and pout and mostly fill in the spaces when the men aren't fighting. But occasionally, when the moon and stars are in some strange conjunction, they get an opportunity to act. In Dushman, made by woman director Tanuja Chandra, Kajol was not just given but took that opportunity. In a story about a violent rape and murder of one sister and a younger sibling (both Kajol) trying to cope with the loss and the extreme violation of dignity, the actress overwhelmed the glamour child. "A great packet of talent, a natural born actress," is how Khalid Mohammed, editor, Filmfare, describes her. Adds film critic Ashish Rajadhyaksha, in a compliment Kajol might want to frame: "She is now in the league of an actress around whom a script can be written and a film made."

Who would have thought that the precocious young girl who threatened to collect her tears in a bottle to give to her mother as evidence of her dislike of boarding school would one day echo Nutan's haunting demeanour? Who would have believed that the carelessly casual girl, who make-up artist Mickey Contractor moans "has to be coaxed to turn out decently dressed for social events", would be seen as continuing an acting tradition set by Waheeda Rehman and mother, Tanuja. But then this is an actress who spurns every filmi cliche, set apart from her peers by the strength of her individuality.

There is a sparkling spontaneity to Kajol, a spirited freshness that is evident in her films and apparent in her manner. Film brats are rapidly tutored on the conventional wisdom of the industry, the line to success that needs to be toed. Maybe Tanuja never taught it, maybe Kajol never listened, for she has abandoned the predictable. She pouts at the thought of photo sessions, meets autograph requests with a stern refusal and pounces on camera-clicking fans with a teeth-baring snarl: "Why should I allow anyone to take my picture? It's an invasion of my privacy." Want to see Kajol, go to the cinema. Even make-up, the very face of the actress, is anathema, tolerated at best as "a necessary waste of time".

This is not an eyelash-flapping, demure debutant, delicately mindful of her Ps and Qs. Instead, pacing the room as furiously as she talks -- 45 minutes without punctuation at one tiring stretch -- she resembles a stick of lit dynamite in motion. Acting to her must come easily, for she has a natural predilection for high drama. She once burst into tears at Mumbai's Taj Mahal Hotel because her little sister Tanisha was leaving to study in Australia. Friends Shah Rukh Khan and director Karan Johar, who consoled her during this alarming bout of hysterics, were not amused when Kajol admitted she was to join Tanisha just four days later.

For all her impulsive streak, she can rapidly alter into a switchblade-tongued woman who is impatient with idiots. Mention that her lineage, as with other actresses, may have helped and she flares: "I don't owe my success to that. Expectations are thrust on you but expectations don't make a career. Hard work, sweat and talent do." Speaking her mind with the volume control set at highest is her style. Says long time friend Johar: "She's so loud you can hear her within a mile's radius. But there's not an artificial bone in her body."

Kajol's refusal to run with the pack has become her signature in the industry as well. As she blooms, producers buzz around her like excited bees. Yet, unlike actresses who sweat between sets, squeezing three shifts in 24 hours, for her one film at a time is enough bliss. She is also, explains Chandra, "very adventurous with the kind of movies she does". It bears out. Early in her career she played an obsessive lover in the Rajiv Rai hit, Gupt. This odd choice of a negative role was rewarded with a Filmfare Best Villainess Award ; it was immediately followed by a portrayal of a naive convent girl in the film Sapnay. But Kajol also seemed to have a measure of the industry, taking it as seriously as it deserves. After Udhar Ki Zindagi, a long forgotten film that has, she says, her finest performance, she felt burnt out and uncharacteristically signed a host of typical masala movies. Why? Tilting towards blasphemy, she says, "They were films where I didn't have to think at all. I could just land up on the sets and do anything and it would not make a difference."

It is an amusing throwaway line. Yet surely Kajol understood that it is precisely the ability to make a difference that forms artistic reputations. She had to evolve and in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, she did. At once glamourous, intense and confident, this was a fine meshing of her best qualities and won her the Filmfare Best Actress Award and a compliment from producer-director Yash Chopra: "She's one of the finest actresses in India right now." She is not a schooled actress of method, more one with a cultivated spontaneity. Says director Rakesh Roshan: "She doesn't belong to any school, but like a fine actress gets under the skin of the character at the drop of a hat and eases out of it equally fast." In Dushman, a significant milestone in her emotional growth, getting under the skin of a violated woman was traumatic, a challenge whose acceptance left her shaken. "It was one of the most debilitating experiences of my life," she says, "and regardless of the role I will never do something like this again."

Don't listen to her, she never does herself. Filming for Dushman on Table Mountain in South Africa, she placed herself precariously on the mountain's precipice for a shot, nonchalantly brushing away entreaties to cease such foolishness. She wobbled, she stumbled, but the scene was done. A fearful Chandra scolded her thereafter, but Kajol just shrugged. The impulse had called and she had succumbed to it. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe she knew that when you're on top of the world nothing is quite impossible.

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