Return of the Natural ; Five Years Ago, Kajol Gave It All Up to Be a Homemaker. Now, the Young Mum, an Unrehearsed Talent in the Age of Nip and Tuck, Is Back in a Role Designed to Unsettle Filmdom's Reigning Deities.

Summary

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One of Kajol's earliest memories is of her grandmother, actor Shobhana Samarth, clattering up to St Joseph's Convent in Panchgani in a beaten up Fiat or Ambassador, to take her to a dentist in Pune. "She never let me feel that my mother (actor Tanuja) was away and working. She was there for us 24/7," says Kajol. Now, at 30, the little girl with braces has become a woman. Well, sort of. She still chews gum and still spits it out obediently into a tissue when asked by a stern photographer to do so. She still reads bestsellers to while away the time between shots. She still drives for pleasure- only, the black Ambassador which she took to work for the first five years of her career has given way to a silver Mercedes gifted by her husband. "And now my daughter wants me in the backseat so that I can entertain her," she laughs.

It's a laugh that lights up her face, the room, and pretty much the immediate neighbourhood. In this age of botox and body- sculpting, Kajol is a breath of fresh air, as "mad and spontaneous as the audience that roots for her," says adman Prasoon Joshi, who has scripted her Tata Indicom ads. Back after a self-imposed five- year exile from the film industry, she seems to the manner born. And yet not overwhelmed by her importance. "Simply put, she has a life beyond movies," says buddy and long-time designer Manish Malhotra. So whether it is refusing to suck in her stomach when wearing a tight dress or even shaping her famous unibrow, she remains unaffected by the vanity her profession demands. She hardly looks into the mirror, barely ever glances at the set monitor, usually the crutch of every insecure actor, puts on make-up only under extreme duress, and as befitting someone who was only allowed to see The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur at school, never watches her old movies. Every minute spent prettifying is probably weighed against infinitely more attractive options: bathing her three-year-old daughter Nysa at least once a day, spending time with her husband, Ajay Devgan, or even hanging out with friends, many of them from school. What do they talk about? Movies? "God no," she says, her face contorted in horror. "There's so much else. Like life. My child, their children. Our families."

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Return of the Natural ; Five Years Ago, Kajol Gave It All Up to Be a Homemaker. Now, the Young Mum, an Unrehearsed Talent in the Age of Nip and Tuck, Is Back in a Role Designed to Unsettle Filmdom's Reigning Deities.

It's a self-taught thought process, which allows her the gumption to take decisions which might seem foolhardy to other women. Few Hindi film heroines have had successful personal lives in the conventional sense. The gracious Sharmila Tagore was always an exception and Kajol may well be the forerunner of a more liberal industry that doesn't think marriage and motherhood entail an arrested career.

But who is the real Kajol? The often brusque, no nonsense star who gives short shrift to ...

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