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Mallika Sherawat: The youth icon?
May 04, 2004
 'Rohtak Se Bollywood Tak`, would be an apt title for her highly adventurous biography. If it’s ever written.
"I virtually had to crawl my way out of my dusty little town in Haryana," she once told me immediately after Murder surprised everyone by its immense and immediate success.
If media attention is the barometer of stardom then Mallika Sherawat is by far the biggest star of Bollywood at the moment. The print medium and its visual counterpart are busy lapping up every pearl of wisdom that the Murder mademoiselle utters. She knows how to shock, and…well…the Indian middleclass loves to be shocked.
Mallika of course loves every bit of it. The latest brainwave in her publicity blitzkrieg is the the one about CNN designating her a ‘Youth Icon’.
Mallika who until the release of Murder was just another over-eager wannabe trying to push all the right buttons, has suddenly found the right slot. The Oomphy Pin-up Girl…every post-pubescent teenager and lonely truck-driver’s fantasy-come-thru.
She could be seen as Bollywood’s equivalent of Linda Lovelace, the leading lady of Gerard Damiano’s sensational porn hit Deep Throat. Released in 1972 the film was the first ‘X’ rated film to get a mainstream release all over the US. Deep Throat made Lovelace the wetdream queen of the nation.
Hard as she tried thereafter, Lovelace couldn’t get out of her pornographic karma. Mallika and Murder replicate in Indian terms the hysteria generated by Lovelace.
Mallika’s popularity is, I’m afraid, extremely male-oriented. The crossover that she hoped to achieve by getting the female audiences on her side, hasn’t really happened.
 Though the film is doing well enough in the fourth week to qualify as a big hit, the audience profile remains unchanged.
Says Patna exhibitor Suman Sinha. "As the weeks went by we had hoped to see women in the theatre. That didn’t happen. Even now it’s only students and single men who come for the film. And as long as women audiences don’t come a film cannot be considered a universal success."
Where does that leave Mallika Sherawat’s rooftop-declared stardom? Not very far, I’m afraid. It would be as big a pity to overestimate the reach of her oomphy stardom as to undermine it. The fact is, Mallika’s frankspeak laced with generous doses of skin show have left the bigwigs of the film industry totally unimpressed.
Not a single topnotch banner is interested in casting her opposite the industry’s mega-heroes. When I suggested her name to a topnotch filmmaker for a very important item song the filmmaker sneered, "She’s too crass to be mainstream. That kind of in-your-face sexuality is ok for thrills in the dark. But put on the lights, and the audience wants to see the wholesome Indian heroine with proper values. That’s why Hema Malini was a far bigger success than Zeenat Aman. Today
 Aishwarya Rai is way ahead of Bipasha Basu."
Mallika is being offered ‘daring’ cinema which would cross the barriers of convention. But cross over to where? The overnight sensation claims her next release Kiss Kiss Ki Kismat doesn’t have a single sexy moment. Does she really believe anyone wants to see Mallika Sherawat as the spunky but meat-less Reema Lamba, the girl who made her debut two years ago as the second lead in Vashu Bhagnani’s Jeena Sirrf Tere Liye?
Murder worked because it gave the audience a new kind of heroine-giri. But an icon? Come on, Mr Riz Khan. Even those members of the audience panting in the theatre right now wouldn’t want their womenfolk at home to be anything like her.
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