At the turn of the millennium, the baton had been passed. A golden generation of Bollywood heroines, led by Madhuri Dixit, Karishma Kapoor and Kajol, had given way to the next. Aishwarya Rai, the Miss World turned actress, had started to do what Miss Universe Sushmita Sen couldn’t – find favour, and resonance, with India’s foremost filmmakers. By 1999, she had already worked with Mani Ratnam, Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Subhash Ghai.
While she was all glamour, tears and cinematic timelessness, her closest contemporaries – Preity Zinta and Rani Mukherjee – occupied the more earthly end of the spectrum. One outperformed her trademark dimples and the other was heard beyond her “hoarse” voice. This was incidentally an era in which almost every new female star was a rank outsider.
Which is why director J.P. Dutta’s hyped Border follow-up, Refugee (2000), made headlines more for its token launch vehicle-ness than its actual content. It starred royalty and heritage: Amitabh Bachchan’s son and Karishma Kapoor’s little sister.
Born to act
The famed cheekbones were yet to cut through the baby fat, but there was something about a pale-faced, rosy-cheeked Kareena Kapoor. Even in her reticent debut, she rarely came across as Raj Kapoor’s granddaughter. There’s always something about that one artist – or athlete, or thinker – every decade. They don’t seem to be working half as much to achieve twice of what their colleagues do. They just have it. Perhaps it was Kapoor’s lineage, or perhaps it was just her hitting the scene at a time when workhorses ruled the roost – her “blue-collared” contemporaries came up the ranks, won pageants, did ads, made mistakes, improved and acted for a living. They acted to survive.
But a young Kapoor acted because she was born to. She almost made it look like the others were working too hard. She was still only a prodigious teenager when she was cast as Kaurvaki, Kalinga’s beautiful warrior princess in Santosh Sivan’s period biopic, Aśoka , and as the stylish, snooty fashionista Pooja “Poo” Sharma in Karan Johar’s sophomore multi-starrer, Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham . One moment she was homeless and crooning the hypnotic Raat Ka Nasha on a raft enveloped by Bheraghat’s shadowy Marble Rocks, and the next, she was rubbing bemused faces in her privileged London upbringing by sashaying down imaginary ramps while spouting mean-girl catchphrases. With these two distinct roles, she had straddled – and surpassed – the status quo by oscillating between the old-school ethereality of Rai and the urbanised spunk of Zinta and Mukherjee.
Her default state of on-screen existence was so effortlessly charismatic that one could immediately sense her directors’ misgivings if she performed too hard (cases in point: Main Prem Ki Deewani Hu, Yaadein, Khushi ). One could sense they were asking a readymade star to act like a star.
Stealing the show
Her finest performances came with fine storytellers: Govind Nihalani’s Dev and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara bore deglam shades of an actress beneath the heroine, and Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met playfully revolved around her freewheeling-pixie lead. None of these characters were path-breaking on paper, but she lent a brand of vulnerability to their ordinariness that allowed the focus to remain on the larger picture. She preferred stealing the show as long as she wasn’t the show. She often stood out when the onus wasn’t completely on her.
The few times Kapoor chose to be the “hero” – in Chameli , and ironically, Madhur Bhandarkar’s overwrought Heroine – she was visibly undone by her own expectations. She played an escort far more organically than Chameli when surrounded by atmospheric players in Talaash . At one point in Heroine , her spiraling ex-superstar protagonist defiantly works with an eccentric art-house Bengali filmmaker to prove she can really act. But such a crisis never presented itself in real life. Being a star actress , she was never scrutinised to the extent of, say, today’s Shah Rukh Khan, for not capitalising on her gifts. Actresses in India are invariably judged for what they bring to the table instead of what they are actually capable of bringing. We already knew she could act, and that was enough for her.
Box office history
Maybe this was Kareena Kapoor’s biggest problem – she might never have considered herself as that once-in-a-lifetime artist. Her eye, I imagine, was always on improving convention. The lineage that propelled her to carve out her own identity was also the lineage that kept her from being hungry. For instance, it’s hard to imagine her wanting to do a Black, Raincoat, Kya Kehna or 7 Khoon Maaf – because she didn’t have much to prove. She instead pitted herself quantitatively against her competitors, starring in a mindboggling 18 Hindi titles in her first four years alone.
Kapoor overexposed herself, doing everything from ensemble comedies to male-dominated spy thrillers and broad terrorist dramas. Working under Nihalani and Bhardwaj was the maximum she challenged her own disposition. She soon “evolved” into an adequate enabler of the showstoppers, Kumars and Khans, content with contributing to their success instead of single-handedly creating her own. She occupied Katrina Kaif-style damsel roles ( Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Agent Vinod, Ra.One, Bodyguard, 3 Idiots ) that were difficult to go wrong, or even right, with. Box office history became the game.
Miles to go…
For someone primed to revolutionise the art of mainstream acting, just a single outstanding “young” performance ( Jab We Met, a little of Ekk Main Aur Ek Tu ) will remain a damning snapshot of her legacy. Perhaps it was the lack of original storytellers – new-age Hindi cinema thrives on woman-oriented vehicles (Priyanka Chopra, Vidya Balan and Kangana Ranaut took over from where Kapoor never left off) – but one can only fantasise about her decisions in this era.
Alia Bhatt today is a natural descendent of Kapoor. But she might just be an improved version already, given her telling no-holds-barred solo turns ( Highway, Dear Zindagi ). They don’t share a frame in last year’s unshackled drug drama, Udta Punjab . But juxtapose Bhatt’s daring role as the brutalised Bihari migrant with Kapoor’s textbook-safe milieu-free doctor part – and you get the stark dichotomy of the older actress’ “expectation” and “reality” career panels.
Fortunately, she isn’t fighting the clock anymore. Mothers and comebacks co-exist in more than just the same phrase these days. It’s never too late for Kareena Kapoor Khan to figuratively shed both those surnames – aristocratic burdens of their own. In an ageist industry, maybe she can actually transcend her destiny now instead of simply fulfilling it.
