A look at Kareena Kapoor Khan’s career graph on her birthday

Kareena Kapoor Khan has always been special, and she has never allowed herself to forget it. Both Kareena and her sister Karisma have been brought up by their no-nonsense mother to believe that making money is the most important human pursuit, everything else comes later. There is no harm in living up to this ideal in life, as Kareena has more than amply demonstrated with the choices, both personal and professional, she has made. Kareena was to make her debut with Hrithik Roshan  in his home production Kaho Naa… Pyar Hai. They even shot a song together before Kareena’s mother decided to opt out. The reason being, Babita thought with Hrithik in a double role her daughter would have nothing to do. If you look very closely you can still spot Kareena in a song in Kaho Naa… Pyar Hai.  Looking back, she had no regrets about losing Kaho Naa…Pyar Hai.  She feels she got a dream debut in J P Dutta’s Refugee, and she is right. In the beginning Kareena wanted to be seen only in salwar-kameez and saree on screen. She felt all the glam-stuff suited only her sister while Kareena was more suited to intense performance parts. Kareena wanted to be another Nutan or Meena Kumari. She had the potential to achieve that level of greatness. But then something happened. She changed her mind about what she wanted. Rather than Nutan she wanted to be Poo. Back then, Kareena used to be a voracious nail-biter, so much so that for a long duration   during the initial years of her career she had to use false nails on screen, until she finally got over her nail-chewing habit. Kareena was offered Deepa Mehta’s Water. She read the script, and was in two minds for very long. Finally, she said no. Because she didn’t want to face the camera with Shabana Azmi who at that point of time was supposed to play the role Seema Biswas eventually did. Sanjay Leela Bhansali wanted Kareena for Black. But Abhishek had lately broken up with Kareena’s sister Karisma. For the senior Bachchan, working with Kareena would have been awkward. That’s how Rani Mukerjee bagged her career’s best role. When I saw Kareena in her debut film Refugee in 2000 I felt it was the best debut I had ever seen, ahead   of even Dimple Kapadia in Bobby and Jaya Bhaduri in Guddi. No film that followed ever captured Kareena’s radiant beauty and ethereal persona as ably as this. Director J P Dutta had made a promise to his friend Randhir Kapoor that he would give the latter’s daughter the kind of launch which audiences would remember for all times.JP kept his promise. From her first glimpse on screen when Abhishek Bachchan sees her splashing water on her face it was love at first sight between Kareena and the camera. Playing a girl scuttling across the border to Pakistan with her family Kareena reminded us of the screen legends of yore like Nutan, Madhubala and Nargis. Her love affair with the camera has continued. In Santosh Sivan’s Asoka in 2001 Kareena was electric on screen as the warrior princess Kaurwaki. Kareena exuded fire and passion in every scene with or without Shah Rukh Khan. Her introductory song San sana san epitomized her mercurial personality. I remember Kareena’s mom Babita telling me after the film’s first trial that her daughter   should just retire after this. As she couldn’t better this. Luckily Kareena could. And she did. In Sudhir Mishra’s Chameli  in 2004 playing the  happy   streetwalker dancing in the rain wearing Manish Malhotra’s kaleidoscopic concept of what a hustler wears, Kareena was  incandescent the way only Madhubala  and  Tabu could be  before  her. Kareena   played the character with not a trace of self-pity and a jar-full of joie de vivre. Director Sudhir Mishra was so impressed that he awaits to this day to work with his ‘Chameli’ again. But then , Kareena did what she is best at. She moved on. Another very precious Kareena performance was   in Yuva (2004). In Mani Ratnam’s layered chocolate-box of a film Kareena played the child of caprice. Whimsical, passionate, uncertain about her future and altogether a portrait of the gen-x’s genuine self-doubts and passionate protests. No film has captured that gamine-like unpredictable quality of hers so well In Govind Nihalani’s Dev Kareena played a role directly inspired by Zaheera Sheikh who testified against the death of fourteen   people in a bakery during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Kareena lived the role of a girl forced to make some very hard decisions about life and death. No makeup, no artifice. No bullshit. Just Kareena and the camera and the truth. In Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara(2006)  playing the victim didn’t  come easily to Kareena. Here playing the desi Desdemona from Shakespeare’s Othello she brought a heart-breaking vulnerability to the part of the wife of a very jealous husband. The best thing about Kareena’s performance was that she seemed to do so little and yet convey so much. But Kareena’s passport to immortality was Jab We Met (2007). This is the one film that she can show her children to prove that Mummy was a terrific actor when she set her mind and heart to it. I haven’t felt anything close to that level of commitment in any of Kareena’s recent performances. Maybe she will surprise us soon with yet another sterling performance.  God knows, she is capable of it, when she puts her heart to it. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.