Birthday Special: Deepika Padukone is to Sanjay Leela Bhansali what Waheeda Rehman was to Guru Dutt

Jaane kya main kahi jaane kya tu ne suni…. Waheeda Rehman’s impish come-hither expressions in Pyaasa are still remembered fondly. Deepika had her own Waheeda moment in Sanjay Bhansali’s Padmaavat when she danced and sang to Ghoomar before her screen husband Shahid Kapoor. Deepika is related to the legendary filmmaker Guru Dutt whose real name was Vasanth Padukone. If she had been born three generations earlier, I am sure Guru Dutt would have selected Deepika for Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool. When Deepika made her debut in 2007 with Om Shanti Om, she couldn’t see eye to eye with her director Farah Khan. One of the reasons for this could be the fact that Deepika is at least a feet taller. Deepika’s voice, which was the highlight of her performance in Bhansali’s cinema, was dubbed in her debut film Om Shanti Om. Out of spite, apparently. Deepika was originally supposed to make her debut in Priyadarshan’s Pirate about musical piracy. She was to be cast as a member of a rock band. That film never got made. Thereafter, she was meant to make her debut with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya. But Bhansali decided to go with the ‘Anil Kapoor’s Daughter & Rishi Kapoor’s Son’ package and signed Sonam and Ranbir instead. Ultimately, Deepika’s debut film released on the same day as Saawariya. Deepika played a double role in her first film Om Shanti Om and then again in the disastrous Chandni Chowk To China with Akshay Kumar. Two double roles in the first one year of her career. Not bad! Like Waheeda Rehman, Deepika is inconsistent in her performances. If Waheeda gave her best to Vijay Anand’s Guide and Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa, she could have given a lot more to Satyajit Ray’s Abhijaan and Sunil Dutt’s Reshma Aur Shera. Likewise, Deepika, so brilliant in some films, stopped short of being outstanding in Padmaavat. Love Aaj Kal (2009) paired Deepika with Saif Ali Khan. Deepika played Meera, a working girl in London not sure of where to draw the line between her heart and head. This was the first inkling of what Deepika was capable of doing when given a chance. It was a performance with nuances that later blew into a Tamasha. But that’s another Imtiaz Ali story, best left untold. Deepika and Ranbir were also heaped with praise for _Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani_. But simply throwing off her spectacles and breaking into a spirited Holi song is not my idea of an evolved performance. Her next flash of brilliance came in Lafangey Parindey (2010). Since this Pradeep Sarkar-directed film flopped, not too many know how brilliantly unobtrusive Deepika was as a blind girl who won’t give up her dreams of making it as a skating champ because of her disability. With Neil Nitin Mukesh as her guilt-ridden paramour, Deepika shone like a majestic meteor. This is my favourite performance by Deepika and the one that most captured the beauty, fragility, strength and muted determination of her personality. In Goliyon Ki Raas Leela Rasleela (2013), Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s colourful splashy Gujarati Romeo & Juliet, Deepika danced the Garba like there was no tomorrow. No wonder Ranveer Singh fell in love with her as she swung to the rumbustious beats with a magnificent elegance. In Rohit Shetty’s Chennai Express (2013), Deepika discovered her funnybones. Playing a South Indian runaway bride her accent, comic timing and her sheer joie de vivre in an innately thought innocuously silly film was priceless. She was far better here in her grasp over the grammar of giggles than in Ram Leela. Shoojit Sircar’s Piku (2015) was a road movie with a soul. Piku presented ‘Deepu’ as a working girl with an unrealistically demanding father. More than her chemistry with her screen dad Amitabh Bachchan, I liked what she did with Irrfan Khan as they took a road trip from Delhi to Kolkata with Piku’s cantankerous father in tow. Piku’s reined-in acerbity was what we feel when a parent makes unreasonable demands. In Sanjay Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani (2015), Deepika performed like a true warrior, I especially liked a sequence where Deepika’s Mastani, armed with the confidence of a woman consumed by love no matter how forbidden, barges into the christening ceremony of her lover’s legitimate baby boy. When taunted for tainting the occasion with green, Mastani gently reminds the congregation that saffron and green, are at the end of the day, blood brothers used in Hindu and Muslim religion. Birju Maharaj’s exquisite choreography for Deepika’s Mohe rang do laal dance number echoes Madhubala’s Mohe panghat pe nandalal from the Asif’s war-romance epic. And when Deepika is swathed in chains of captivity she is as much a figure of tragic grandeur as Madhubala singing Beqas pe karam kijiye sakar-e-Madina in Mughal-E-Azam. Here she was as statuesque as Madhubala, riding horses and destiny with equal grace and dignity. As for Padmaavat (2018), Sanjay Bhansali and I have endless arguments on what Deepika could have done with this role of a firebrand queen stuck with a nerdy king-husband and compelled to face a ferocious lustful invader all on her own. Deepika’s eyes should have been spewing a fiery rage. Instead she held back. Just giving us glimpses of her wrath at the thought of violation. This is a performance that should have shook us. Instead, it had me desirous of shaking up the actress. Girl, where was the passion? I have not seen Deepika giving a remarkable performance lately. Beautiful actresses yearn to turn the tables on themselves. In Megha Gulzar’s Chhapaak Deepika played a victim of an acid attack with a scarred face. It was a look-at-me performance lacking conviction. In a film ironically titled Gehraiyaan, she was cast as a fractured broken woman struggling with suicidal thoughts and emotional-physical indiscretions that would shame the self-delusional antics of Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins. Padukone tries hard to give a semblance of structure to her character Alisha, hellbent on ruining everything she touches. It is a fractured performance begging for the process of healing to begin. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.