BONNY Arin is like any other eight-month-old, inquisitive and hell-bent on exploring every inch of accessible space. The living room is littered with toys—a life-size yellow teddy and scores of noisy playthings. But Arin likes my pen. And before he can reach out for it, Madhuri Dixit gets in the way, sweetly admonishes him with a “gunda!” and proceeds to distract him with another squeezy toy. In a white Lucknowi suit and looking just the way she did in Dil To Pagal Hai, she’s back in Mumbai after a year. She says she’s thoroughly enjoying herself at her parents’ pad in the leafy suburb of Juhu and confesses she enjoys all the mom stuff. You can see she’s a complete natural, just like she was all those years back. The roles, of course, are the only difference. From midnight feeding sessions to washing her son’s nappies—she has done it all for her son. ‘‘I don’t have any help at home. I’ve been looking after Arin since the day he was born, though my mom and mother-in-law were always there to guide me,’’ she says, getting all nostalgic about the time she counted Arin’s fingers and toes after he was born. ‘‘It was such a humbling experience to hold him for the first time. No amount of stardom can ever compare with the feeling of seeing this perfectly created part of you, an extension of yourself.’’ It’s amazing how the 33-year old actress fits so comfortably into her new role. Madhuri, after all, was for almost a decade the closest thing Bollywood had to a female superstar, transcending class barriers and leaping over art and mainstream film fences. Small beauty saloons that dot the city where Madhuri became famous still have her posters in their windows. They even made a movie about someone who wanted to be just like her but the original still hasn’t seen Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon. She’s her usual matter-of-fact self. “I’ve always led two separate lives. The moment the camera switched off, I became the girl-next-door. And I continue to live my life the same way after my marriage and the baby. I don’t ponder about what I was, I only think about what I will do next.’’ She pauses and then adds, ‘‘There are days when I’m in the mall in Denver, busy wondering which cereal to buy Arin when suddenly I hear excited chatter. People flock around me and ask, ‘Are you Madhuri Dixit?’. For a minute, it doesn’t strike me. I ask myself, am I Madhuri? It’s a funny experience but it does happen.’’ She points to a huge MF Husain on the wall, which depicts the various roles of a woman. ‘‘This was done during Gajagamini. I’ve had it for many years but it’s only now that I understand the power of being a woman,’’ she smiles. ‘‘All those roles that I played and emotions that I acted out, I understand them only now.’’ These days—and she’s here for a couple of months—Madhuri plans to just “relax, chill and catch up on movies”. “I’ve been out of touch for almost a year,” she says, “and once this Energizer battery gives me some time off, I intend to catch up,” she points towards Arin. Since she has come home, Madhuri has been listening to scripts. Film-makers like Zoya Akhtar, Zafar Hai, Rituparno Ghosh and Rajkumar Santoshi have approached her but she’s taking her time. ‘‘The film should be worth taking the effort of me coming all the way from the US and shooting for it.’’ Husband ‘‘Ram (Shriram Nene) has never had a problem’’ with her work, ‘‘He’s with me always and encourages me not to give up acting and my Kathak.’’ However, she does admit that all this will require sound planning and balancing on her side. ‘‘I think one can do anything at any point of time. Nothing is really over as long as you keep on doing something.’’ Considering the fact that some of our Bollywood actresses are trying hard to woo the big H, will Madhuri do the same? In fact, it’ll be easy for her to hire an agent and all that jazz since she lives there. ‘‘If I get a good role from Hollywood then I might consider it. But even if it doesn’t happen I won’t be losing any sleep because there’s so much more to life than just acting and roles.’’
