The first time I met her, she was shooting for that marathon movie called Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam with Salman Khan in a bungalow. “I wanted to meet you to give you a piece of my mind. You had said some very nasty things about my song Choli Ke Peechhe Kya Hai,” she greeted me with a sneer.
It was rather strange that she wanted to give me a piece of her mind when it was she who had the nation aghast with her suggestive song. Anyway, the ice broke (though it never melted) and we chatted. Salman peeped in later, saw me sitting with Madhuri, froze and left. When I was ready to do the same, I realised to my horror that Salman had bolted the door of the makeup room from outside. She grinned in embarrassment and shouted for help. I left.
Many years later, I met Madhuri again on the sets of my dear friend Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas. She was cordial but not friendly.
She gave the hits. But has anyone seen the way she was presented in her most successful films? Barring Bhansali’s Devdas and perhaps Prakash Jha’s Mrityudand, all the directors she worked with camouflaged her considerable facial beauty in acres of muck. But the zeroes on the paycheque were just right.
Madhuri was meant to be a diva, not a mannequin. She thought she chose her roles well. But she didn’t. Turning down Bhansali’s Khamoshi: The Musical only because he was a new director was a huge mistake. She made the new director wait for hours on end for days and days. She wouldn’t even open the door of her makeup room to let him say ‘hello’. Finally, she said ‘no’.
Much later I asked her why and she answered, “I couldn’t relate to the character of the normal girl with deaf and mute parents,” she confessed. Yeah, right. Much easier to relate to the girl in Indra Kumar’s Dil or the daughter-in-law in Beta.
She also lost Vinod Chopra’s 1942: A Love Story over a monetary issue. Money, I guess, was always an important factor for her. Nothing wrong with that. Except that greatness for an artist comes from creative flexibility, not the bank account.
I haven’t come across anyone who says, “I’d have liked to write that one memorable role for Madhuri that would’ve immortalised her,” the way they say about Sridevi. Most believe she left at the right time. Her career couldn’t go beyond Bhansali and Devdas.
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