A few days back, I and some other hostel mates were having a debate, trying to come up with the best leading lady in Bollywood. I use the word “leading lady” because it was a personal input of mine to judge those ladies on a combined scale of acting capabilities, looks, projected image in the general eye and the effect they have on people’s mind. Somehow, I was surprised to find most of them identifying with Deepika Padukone on grounds unknown. Maybe they had an inherent predisposition towards her and didn’t really pay heed to the grounds I mentioned; Maybe it wasn’t such an intellectual discussion anyway. My point is that although they, which can very well be called the mirror of the present generation that is and is likely to in the future, fill cinema halls with their “extra money to dispose” and “extra time to kill”, that choice of their seemed at poles with mine- Anushka Sharma.
Anushka Sharma is the Nicole Kidman of Bollywood. In addition and maybe a strong contradiction to this, she is the peppy, most lively, high octane performer in Bollywood. I remember her confiding to the public about some girl who remarked about her – “It’s like all the bubbliness of North India is filled in this girl only”. While the girl as well as Anushka might have seen this in a negative light, it might be possible that deep down, the actress as well as her roles have always had an uplifting influence on everyone.
Anushka is a professional actress; and that is not a generic word in Bollywood because too few actresses are actually professional enough. Anushka knows how to be the talk of the town and that too for respectable reasons. She knows how to make powerful statements at the right time and how to shed away any weights that might hinder her ascent to the top. And it is safe to say that if she does not fall into any dreams of marrying a businessman and living a life far from B-Wood with charity institutions, she could very well become the Greatest Indian Actress of all time.
If you have a look at her filmography, you will find few roles that actually had to do big with audiences and to the film at large. But what lies even deeper in this observation is not what she does with these big roles but what she does with the smaller ones. Whether she is being the Shruti Kakkar of ‘Band Baaja Baaraat’, the Meera of ‘NH-10’ or the Bijlee of ‘Matru Ki Bijlee ka mandola’, she attaches as much importance to each of her roles as one would if one were doing the last film of his/her life. That is the kind of dedication that Bollywood not only deserves but needs direly.
She might not be something who was projected as ‘the next big thing’ of Bollywood by media outlets or ‘big outlets’ but she is someone who will carve her own niche in Bollywood. This article would be a more interesting read then but I am writing it now because then, it would be all too obvious.
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