Madhuri’s last chance?

But if that is true, then Madhuri does very well to mask her apprehension. Sitting in the cool comfort of her Juhu residence, dressed casually in blue jeans and a bright red top, Madhuri still looks the simple girl-next-door. There are no signs of a star on the descent. In fact, the glow on her face, her smile — that smile, and her disarming manner, speak of someone who is quite content with life. "I am not pinning all my hopes on Dil To Pagal Hai because I am not an insecure person. It’s a nice film and I hope it does well," she says.

And it just might. After a long time Madhuri is playing her age and herself. Says she, "Like me, Pooja is a girl from a middle-class family who loves dance and music. And her ideals and ideas about love are also similar to mine." But whether she believes in love thy enemy or killing with kindness, the fact is that Madhuri may well have to concede defeat to the current reigning queen in Yash Chopra’s new film. Again she refuses to be baited. "I was very comfortable working with Karisma. I think this whole rivalry bit was just done to promote the film," she laughs. Perhaps she should be clutching at those straws. After all, if anyone can put her star back on the ascendant it’s ace director, Chopra. If that fails, then what?

Logically, charmingly, she starts to dislodge the crown of flop star and you get a glimpse of the steel behind the smile. "Both Koyla and Mohabbat didn’t do as badly as it was made out. Koyla was sold for a very high price but it still finished as a commission-earner. Besides it gave me an opportunity to play a character I hadn’t done before," she says.

The desire to do something different also puts Madhuri in the category of stars who are willing to experiment with their heroes. In Mohabbat, touted as her comeback film, she took a chance and paired up with Akshaye Khanna. A decision that did not sit well with an audience that has seen her sizzle with the father, Vinod Khanna, in one of her earlier films Dayavaan. For another, she looked too tired to be Akshaye’s amour. And there was no on-screen chemistry between the two.

And once again she appears to be repeating her mistakes by teaming up with heroes who look young enough to be her sons. In Arzoo, she is cast opposite Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan. "I have little to do with the choice of co-star. I concentrate on my character and leave everything else to the director," she says. Among those directors are N Chandra (Wajood), Raj Kumar Santoshi (Pukar) and K C Bokadia. M F Husain’s film starring the painter and his muse is also on the anvil.

The only time Madhuri swallows the bait and bubbles over with indignation is when it comes to matters of the heart. Rumours of Madhuri’s marriage to an industrialist in America have been doing the rounds for several months. Her frequent and long visits to the US have only added fuel to the fire. "I was there for two and a half months as I took a holiday after I finished shooting. But even before I left India, people made it look like I was going there to get married," she says.

While the man of Madhuri’s dreams is, "a normal, down-to-earth person who is intelligent", at the moment her head rules her heart. She is concentrating on proving her critics wrong. A game that Madhuri has played many times before. Right from the start she was labelled a flop, her losing streak ending with Tezaab, a hit at the ripe old age of 23. From her dizzying climb to the top to her plunge to rock bottom, Madhuri’s middle class sensibility has been her trump card in maintaining an even keel. "I don’t get unduly depressed by failure. I feel that if you have no problems then you should look yourself in the mirror to check if you are still alive," she says.