freebird

It’s an unqualified tragedy. Scarlette Johansson has gotten engaged. To a fellow actor, who else? What does this mean – will she be lost to the fantasies of all the other bachelors? That’s stupid of course. She is just sporting a rock. She is not yet married. And additionally she is still very very young. Miss Johansson is not a 40 something for the amour to die.

But not in India apparently. In Bollywood, any actress (note only actress; the female of the actor) who announces their engagement or worse still, marriage, suddenly loses her market value. By how much is debatable, but a loss is definitely on the cards.

Actresses are known to prolong their careers, dodge the perennial question, loose boyfriends in the process but keep the dreaded rock off their hands.

What about Aishwarya, you might say? She is married into the Big B family. She will get roles one way or the other. But there is a perceptible shift even in her choices. She has just refused a film in which she is supposed to play a woman who is confused between 2 men. She said how can she be, she is married now! Cannot Aishwarya differentiate between her screen roles and her personal life? Does she belong to an acting school that believes in interiorizing roles to such an extent that their reel and real life becomes confused and blurred? Does she walk this thin dangerous line? Rejecting scripts that demand so much of emotional investment that the poor girl just has to say yes to all the banal, ordinary and regular fare that she dances and cries to with so much gusto? Doesn’t seem so, but…

Madhuri, the Dhak Dhak girl who moved and never left the hearts of Indian cine-goers. Look at Mrs. Nene’s fate. All her moves in Aaja Nach Le were washed away. Sridevi is still waiting for her ideal re-launch pad. I don’t think she is ever going to make a com-back. Raveena, Zeenat. Nobody comes back in India. Not as a heroine.

If you are married to somebody else then? Even a superstar doesn’t help much. Look at Namrata Shirodkar who married a Telugu superstar or Amla who married Nagarjuna. Dimple married Rajesh K at the peak and yet.

‘Namak khatam ho gaya’ people say or the sex appeal has disappeared…at least dwindled. Why does marriage result in such a big turnaround? How does a sex goddess become an epitome of motherhood and saintliness overnight just because she has married? Just happens so in India.

Distributors, exhibitors, producers, casting agents and even fellow actors, they flash the know-it-all smile, with a tinge of sympathy which says ‘it is all OVER’. Why did she ever take the plunge?

But Scarlett has done it. Congratulations.