It was after she had won the Miss World
contest that she was felicitated at her college back home in Mumbai. This is
when Ash realised a critical thing that was to change her life forever. In
India, she could never be a normal college-going girl again. She was too big,
too well known for somebody her age. The girl was left with two options: either
go abroad and study or look out for an alternative in terms of career within
India. Even before she won the Miss World title, she had received film offers.
But Ash did not show any interest in the medium barring that one special
appearance till she got back home after her triumph at the Sun City. This was
when Mani Ratnam happened. He wanted to cast her in his film Iruvar, and Ash
agreed.
But why Iruvarand not a regular big
budget Hindi film which would have been the far more obvious choice? In an exhaustive
interview to the web site rediff.com, Ash said: "Well, Mani was - and is -
very very big. One of the best directors in India, perhaps the best, comparable
to the best worldwide. But that was only half the attraction. When I decided
that I was going to give movies a try, I wanted to break the norms, I wanted to
break the myths, the expectations. The offers I got till then were about me,
around me - I was this beauty queen and the films offered highlighted me, put
me in the forefront. It's like 'oh, she won a Miss World so they are making a
movie with her."
She went on to rationalise: "But
Mani's film Iruvarwas not about me - it was not about Aishwarya Rai. Mohanlal
is the central character, there were other very talented actors and actresses,
there was a very talented crew and then there was Mani himself. I was only a
small part of the project and that is why I consciously chose that role, rather
than one that revolved around me."
In her homepage www.suhasinl.com, the
director's wife Suhasini Mani Ratnam goes back to the days when Ash had gone
down to Chennai to act in her husband's film. "I was not stunned by her
beauty, but by her modesty and simplicity. Quite contrary to what is believed
of her, she is not only nice and simple but also very, very sweet. The biggest
joke was when she asked my advice on how to maintain a good, clear skin - and
this was after ten days of shooting. Imagine she wanted beauty tips from me. I
was. aghast. 'Are you joking?' I asked. She said she was dead serious."
"Her logic was that since I had
done so many films 140 to be more specific - I would be in a position to advise
her on how to deal with harsh lights and the sunlight and retain the freshness
of the complexion. So I told her. Imagine I got to advise Miss World on how to
keep herself beautiful in the face of such grueling conditions. I also gave her
the recipe of an oil that has helped my long hair."
Suhasini also remembers that the girl,
beneath her "soft and quiet" exterior "has a way of gentle
teasing." "For instance every time I wore a sari during the shooting
of Iruvar she would say 'my, my, look who is looking so pretty today!.' I have
rarely seen women, especially beautiful women complimenting another. But Ash is
not like that. I helped Aishwarya quite a bit with the dialogues - the intense
ones specially - since I had written them I found it easier to read it out so
that she would get the hang of it. She would stare, keep staring at my eyes,
and say 'I can't seem to get the expression the way you get it.' She made me
blush with embarrassment since it was not my intention to act it out and show
it to her. I used to read the dialogues and she would tease me saying 'when you
read, your eyes are acting.'
Ash's rival in the world of modeling
Sushmita Sen had made her debut in Bollywood with Dastak a few months before
Iruvar was released. The film sank without a trace and, with it, many
self-styled prophets of doom wrote the epitaph of Sushmita's career. Iruvar,
however, was bigger and simply because it was being directed by none other
Ratnam, starred Aishwarya and that legend among actors down South who was seen
in Ram Gopal Varma.'s Company recently: Mohanlal.
People had a lot of expectations from
this Ratnam film but the box office statistics had a different story to narrate
once it was released. The film had bombed, no two ways about it, and its fiasco
led to a question which several critics of models-turned-actresses asked in
unison: were Sush and Ash just hype, or did the film industry have any genuine
reason for hope from this twosome?
The former Miss World had taken several
bold steps which none could ignore. First, she had decided to work in a South
Indian film for starters. Then, she had shown her keenness to be cast opposite
Mohanlal who was much older than her. In an interview to Stardust around the
time the film was released, she explained what made the experience of working
with the actor very satisfying: "I think Mohanlal is an amazing actor.
Physical attributes don't matter to me at all. You watch Iruvarand you realise
that Mohanlal is a master at his art. In fact, I am very glad that I starred in
the film with him. Whether we are a match or not is the director's verdict. If
I had gone seeking publicity, I would have posed with every star who is happening
and appeared in every magazine. Watching IVlohanlal is such a treat. And
believe me, he has got a lot of subtlety"
The young actress seemed to have her
heart in the right place since she wasn't besotted with the idea of looking
glamorous; and just that, on the big screen. But the decision had backfired
quite badly, and many attributed this to the fact that Ratnam had been inspired
by the real life story of politician Jayalalitha who has always had a huge fan
following in the state of Tamil Nadu. In the film, Ash played a double role:
one of a village belle named Pushpa and the other of Kalpana who joins films
because of pressure from her mother. (The latter's character, felt observers,
had been inspired by Jayalalitha).
This inspiration factor apart, Ratnam
erred for once and did not get it right at the level of scripting which holds
the key. Yet, the person who received the maximum amount of attention and for
the wrong reasons was Ash. Never mind the twin facts that she was still an
infant in the field of cinema and that Iruvar was her debut for all practical
purposes. The film was widely talked about as Ash's film, in fact so much so
that some perceived it as her failure!
Despite the commercial debacle of
Iruvar, one thing that emerged as the talking point was Ash's exquisitely
graceful dancing, and certain sections did feel that she hadn't done too badly
as an actress either. Back in Bollywood, her first release - also in 1997 - was
Rahul Rawail's Aur Pyar Ho Gaya. The film hit the big screens in August and,
before one knew, was replaced by some film or the other in theatres across the
country. Superficially looked at, Aur Pyar... had several factors going for it.
It had Ash, Bobby Deol, was being directed by Rawail and had music by the
hugely talented late Ustad Nusrat Fateh Khan.
Each of the aspects in isolation was
really promising, but the end product was most disappointing. Rishi Kapoor, who
had signed Ash for his debut directorial -venture Aa Ab Laut Chalen, told
Showtime. "The film: didn't hold you. It was meant to be a breezy
entertainer, but there wasn't much to the story. Besides, I felt that the.
music did not go well with the visuals." Trade analyst Komal Nahata
asserted most categorically: "It was too bad a film, period. It was too
straight a love story and there was no fire in the romance between the lead
pair. There seemed to be no chemistry between Bobby and Aishwarya."
The pluses that Ash had accumulated
after Iruvar- her dancing, her performance and so on - suddenly seemed to be a
thing of the past. Public memory, after all, is really short and what concerns
the masses most is what they see '
then, at that point in time. For her performance in Aur Pyar..., Ash got very
few appreciative nods from persons both within and outside the industry. A
question stared at the faces of many: where would her career go from there?
The breaks she had got, the number of
opportunities that had come knocking at her doorstep, could have been a matter
of envy for many. But now, she needed to deliver at the box office. Like all
performers, Aishwarya Rai needed a hit. She needed a hit very badly.
That success did not come to her with
jeans, which had been originally made in Tamil but whose Hindi version bombed
at the box office once again. Made on a such a scale that the usage of the word
'lavish' would be a pitiable euphemism, and starring Prashanth and Ash, this
was the film with which many were hoping that the latter would hit the
proverbial jackpot. The actress herself was really optimistic, and as she said in
an interview: "Actually I am quite excited about jeans. The title
signifies a lot of things, among them is youth. " She was not at all
concerned about the threat that she could be labeled as an actress who was
preferring to do films down South: "I think it is a good thing that I
started doing South films and Hindi films at the same time because if I don't
fare well in either industry, I won't be labeled a flop Hindi film heroine just
because I went to the South or vice versa."
Jeans bombed and, in retrospect, why
that happened is easy to understand. It had nothing to grip the viewer. The
movie is the story of an NRI father (played by the veteran South Indian
character actor Nasser) who wants to ensure that his sons who are twins should
get married to girls who are twins as well. A series of events, several of them
utterly silly, lead to a romance between one of his sons and Ash, who plays the
character of Madhumita who goes off to the United States for the treatment for
her grandmother's brain tumour.
That the film had technical gloss was
visible, that its budget was huge by Indian standards was equally palpable, but
it ended up being a flop because the story had far too many loose ends. Ash's
performance in the film had nothing to write home about as well, and that gave
many critics an opportunity to spin yarns on her lack of acting talent and the
distinct possibility that she would not be able to make a mark in the world of
cinema.
Meanwhile, the man who had taken the
nation by storm by playing the lover boy in, Bobby way back in 1973 had turned
director with his debut venture Aa Ab Laut Chalen. Yes, Rishi Kapoor who hadn't
liked Ash's first Hindi film was behind the camera, and he was all set to
deliver his first romantic love story. Aa Ab...was an important film simply
because it was being made under the banner of the prestigious RK Films, and Ash
at that time was justifiably optimistic like anyone else would have been:
"Rishi Kapoor is a tremendous actor and very confident. He has been on
this side of the fence, so I am sure he will do a fantastic job with the film.
Incidentally, this is the 50th anniversary year of RK. So I feel very
privileged."
The cinematic romance starred Akshaye
Khanna and Ash, and the latter played the character of a beautiful and innocent
girl named Pooja who reaches the USA only to realise that her brother has some
vested interests behind calling her to the distant country. She leaves the
house, and eventually finds her love after encountering a set of unusual - and
some uneasy - situations in an alien land.
As an actress, Ash's performance was an
improvement upon her previous Hindi film, but as a web site reviewer pointed
out: "Aishwarya still needs to learn lessons on intermediate emoting and
basic voice modulation, but while we wait, her beauty and innocence provides
ample distraction." Something was missing in her performance, same for the
film that did not go down well with the masses.
However, there were people in the
industry who believed that Ash had it in her to make it. During that time,
director Raj Kumar Santoshi was quoted as saying: "Aishwarya has lived up
to the expectations that directors Rahul Rawail and Rishi Kapoor had of her.
But, the critics have torn her apart, and that is very unfair. I find she is in
a similar predicament as Hema Malini was before she got Seeta and Geeta. She
too was torn to shreds until this film came along."
Right from the moment she stepped into
the industry, Ash was burdened with unnecessarily high expectations. Being a
young achiever can be a great feeling, but Ash was viewed by many as if she
were a veteran of many films when the fact was that she was still essaying to
find her feet in the industry. Subhash Ghai had observed then: "Usually
people expect a newcomer to be an ordinary person, minus achievements and
success, and then, after a great deal of struggle, they rise to become stars.
But Ash was already successful. Imagine what people's expectations would be
from Sachin Tendulkar if he came on the big screen as a hero. He would have to
prove a lot more."
After a few failures in the commercial
sense, however, a section of the media started looking at every thing that Ash
had refused before she finally went ahead arid worked with Mani Ratnam. In this
fairly long list were quite a few movies including Sooraj Barjatya's Hum Saath
Saath Hain, a project she had turned down at the very outset of her career.
There were assumptions that she did not wish to do the film because it was a
multi-starrer in which Ash might have been eclipsed by some costar or the
other.
Ash had reacted to the speculation in a
matter-of-fact manner: "The media assumed that I didn't want to do Sooraj
Barjatya's HSSH because I was insecure. Even Sooraj asked me whether insecurity
was the reason for my rejecting the offer. But I reminded him of the very first
film that I did which was in Tamil ... I .told Sooraj that I genuinely didn't
have the dates he wanted. Am I a fool that I wouldn't do a surefire hit
film?" She went on to remind that she had not taken up the role that Rani
Mukherjee eventually did in Karan Johar's Kuch Kuch Hota ; Hai and for exactly the same reason. She also referred to
offers from directors like Rajiv Rai (for Mohra) and Dharmesh Darshan (for Raja
Hindustam) that she had turned down because she was keen on completing her
architecture course then.
Most of these films had turned out to
be big hits. Karan Johar's KKHH was a super hit and, although Kajol had the
meatier role, Rani Mukherjee managed to hijack her share of limelight which Ash
could have done had she chosen to do the film. Darshan's Raja Hindustanl was a
big success as well and, again because of destiny (read, the desire to finish
her studies), Ash had rejected the offer when it had come to her.
A few movies, and an equal number of flops
later, many started pointing fingers at Ash's decisions in the initial phase of
her career. From being a girl whom none other than the well-known
director-producer Yash Chopra had wanted to launch much before she became the
proud owner of the Miss World title, she in early 1999 had had a few releases
out of which none had made an impact on the box office. Failures are the
pillars of the success, some say. The problem with Ash, one might have added,
was that she was building one pillar after the other!
This was a phase in her life when her
acting was being criticised by many, and the industry had its share of cynics
who were ready to write her off as just another model who was breathtakingly
beautiful but could not perform to save her life. As Santoshi said, she needed
a Seeta Aur Geeta to make a statement of her acting prowess. Santoshi was
optimistic that she would get it.
The phenomenally talented Mani Ratnam
had failed to do the magic. Rishi Kapoor had floundered in his debut film.
Rahul Rawail had disappointed with his movie, and so had Shankar. The one
person common to all the four filmmakers was Ash who was looking at tomorrow
with great expectations. The expectation of getting a hit which would help her
prove that the cynicism surrounding her - due to the twin facts of being so
beautiful as also former Miss World - was meaningless.
