From ashes to ashes

From Ashes to ashes

Subhash K Jha

Okay. Diwali was a demon at the turnstiles. Kyon Ki was too morbid for the festive season…but it had its bright spots – Kareena Kapoor's vanilla-vibrant presence and Jackie Shroff's clenched intensity. Good to see this languishing actor back in form. He's equally watchable in Rituparno Ghosh's critically walloped Antar Mahal.

Hey, that too is a film which needs sympathetic study. Methinks; Ritu has too many well-wishers in Bollywood…if you know what I mean. What stays with you is Abhishek's brief intensity and Soha Ali Khan's fragile vulnerable face so uncannily reminiscent of her mom Sharmila Tagore's earliest appearance as a child-woman in Satyajit Ray's Devi.

The first part of November is a Scorpion's special. Many of the people I like/love in the industry were born during this period – Raveena, Aishwarya, Shah Rukh, Tabu, Sushmita, Kamal Haasan to name a few.

This week King Khan and Rani Rai turned a year older. Their birthday is separated by a day. I wished Ash on the 1st and before I could remind her that mine came a day later she told me she remembered. Next day, she was on the phone in the morning, Slovakian time-singing Happy Birthday to me.

I'd like to believe that not too many people have the privilege of hearing one of the world's most beautiful women sing to them on their birthday. But as our mutual friend Simi Garewal puts it, "Ash is as beautiful inside as she is outside. It's difficult for people to digest that. So they conveniently conclude the sweet exterior hides a devious inner life." I've seen her go through acute pain. Aishwarya or Ash, as friends insist on calling her – was in a bad relationship when I first met her. It was during the making of Devdas, and the man in her life would insist on barging into her schedules whenever he felt like. He was making his presence felt in the most embarrassing and sadistic ways.

"It was like my breath was being choked out of my body all the time," she later confessed. Whenever Aishwarya speaks about 'that' part of her life she grows cold, like a cloud dimming the brightness of the sun.

The lady was traumatised. But she never allowed it to show in her performance or public conduct. I remember her on the set of Devdas, dancing with Madhuri Dixit to the beats of 'Dola re'. After every shot, Ash would rush to the monitor jump, squeal, dance and huddle playfully with the director to see the end-results.

And people said she was insensitive. "But they must understand my pain is not for anyone to sympathise or share it. What I went through was my own and will remain my own. If my infamous giggle offended people they've to understand it's my defence mechanism. I cannot and will not express my personal pain in public."

She couldn't have chosen a better time to play the part of the brutalised battered wife in Jagmohan Mundhra's Provoked. Provoked will take Aishwarya further away from her fragile porcelain beauty image. I've seen how determinedly she has fought back the adversities in her life. Cynics called her a tease and a fake for the flirty way she brushed of the welters and bruises. Fact is, this lady has been through hell, and has emerged victorious. Today Ash is in a far more calm and comforting relationship. Vivek Oberoi makes her feel like a lady. She loves the kindness and chivalry, the small and thoughtful gestures he showers on her. She loves Vivek's passion for propriety. Because she's a blossoming ideologist herself.

In all the time that I've known her I've never seen Aishwarya bitch about anyone, not even those who have caused her immense grief. Though people think otherwise Ash is one of the least affected actresses I know. After all these years she still doesn't know how to handle compliments on her looks.

"I don't know," she once said, "Maybe there're classes where you learn how to handle beauty compliments." I never want that infectious giggle to subside. I want this woman of substance to be happy and successful. Because she has earned both.