Not for the couple’s sake, but for the sake of their film I hope Shahid and Priyanka are not together any more. Real-life couples are generally boring and bland on screen. With an over-active media feeding us every detail of star lives, real-life couples come visiting us every evening. After watching John and Bipasha cutting ribbons, they don’t cut ice as a fictional couple. I want to see Bipasha with Saif and John with Kangna Ranaut.I’d rather see Priyanka with someone whom she’s not seeing, like Kareena Kapoor was not ‘seeing’ the aforementioned Mr Kapoor by the time Jab We Met came out.Suppose they had been together when Imtiaz Ali’s film was released. Would their chemistry have suggested the mystery that makes a screen couple appear so credible in their exploration of that magical space on the screen? I doubt it. I’m charged up about Saif’s first home production, because I see Saif with a fresh co-star Deepika Padukone, rather than his girlfriend.
Kareena, I’d rather see with Akshay Kumar. In fact one of Akshay’s basic gyan on career management is to work with a very large spectrum of leading ladies.Star pairings should be completely liberated of personal issues and prejudices.If not, then we’ll be forced to enter the comfort zone with couples who want to spend time together, while playing characters they couldn’t care less about. A majority of Rajesh Khanna’s films were with Mumtaz and Sharmila Tagore. But let’s be forthright. No star-pair today can create the magic that he did with his two favourite heroines. Wisely Ranbir too isn’t doing too many films with the love of his life, Deepika.Barring a Bandhe Haath with Mumtaz and Besharam and Faraar with Sharmila, these two ladies hardly ever worked with Amitabh Bachchan, because of Rajesh Khanna. But Khanna, bless his democratic spirit, worked with every heroine from Mala Sinha to Mala Sinha’s colleague Amita’s daughter Sabiha.
The Bollywood girls today need to break the shackles of ‘shelf’ interest and look at what’s good for them. Very soon their innings will be closing and they would’ve big heroes missing from their account.
