Between Madhuri and Mallaika's Vanity Vans.
Jhalak Dikla Jaa.
In this week's Tehelka, Nishita Jha discovers that hanging out at the Sony TV's Jhalak Dikla Jha , is a refresher course of the Madhuri Dixit Charm. Read the full story along with a photograph I clicked in"The Mummification of Madhuri Dixit".
Fans from far and wide, armed with autograph books and cameras to people with bound scripts, and business offers wait for Madhuri Dixit outside the studio and vanity van all day and late into the night.
Tehelka: "What is unusual is that in a hero-centric and youth obsessed industry, the object of this adulation is a 43-year-old woman who lives in Denver, US, who last achieved Bollywood success eight years ago (in Devdas)."
But while waiting for Madhuri, the fans got a chance to meet their favourite TV stars who are part of the TV show when they step out for a break.
TV stars now rank high up there among the stars these days. After all, Madhuri is probably just following the footsteps of Amitabh Bachchan, who reinvented himself on television with KBC.
And this is a season for dance.
Our appetite for entertainment is huge and these days the synonym for entertainment is dance, across all channels and languages. So we have Madhuri Dixit being lured in from America and this young man with a killer punch and knock-out sense of humour - boxer Akhil Kumar (website). He's also one of the contestants in this "dance" reality show.
If dance is the current favourite, then who better than Madhuri Dixit? Her small screen appearance marks the high point of dance on TV. The other dancer who got a new lease of life is Mithun. He hosts a popular dance show on Zee TV.
About dance and Madhuri, Tehelka has this to say, "She entered Bollywood in a period of lull — before the Khans emerged, when producers were still looking to replicate the Bachchan magic. While most of her co-stars (like Anil Kapoor and Vinod Khanna) were successful actors; it was the popularity of song-and dance sequences that gave actresses equal screen time. As a result, in spite of stellar theatrical performances like her role in Beta (a film that critics privately rechristened Beti), what we remember is Madhuri in a golden choli, her bosom heaving to dhak dhak."
Today, after the failure to recreate Amitabh's KBC magic and when there's a drought of ideas for TV shows, dance rules once again and Madhuri is back. And we, with remote controls in our hands, are the new Maharajas of India who can make anyone dance in our darbar.
