Sunday, June 10, 2001		Profile

THE Bollywood rumour mill is working overtime on Madhuri Dixit. At first it was said that she was packing her bags and moving to the USA to join her husband. Then word went around about her filing a divorce suit in a Mumbai family court. And now, everybody wants to know if she is pregnant.

In India recently to wrap up the filming of Sanjay Bhansali’s Devdas, Madhuri is plain amused by these rumours. "But I know I have been pregnant for the past seven months," she laughs. "That only shows how much sense people who float such rumours have."

Then switching on to a serious note, she complains: "Why don’t people let things be? I believe things will happen when they have to happen. You cannot make them happen. In its anxiety to be the first to print, the Press has been jumping the gun. I guess when you are married they should leave you alone."

The actress however, does not deny that in the long run, she would migrate to the USA and settle down with her husband. But till then, she is enjoying her "dual life" — being a wife and an actress, with one leg in India and the other in the USA.

"Professionally, marriage hasn’t made a difference in the kind of roles I get," she reflects. "I had long ago stopped running around trees and behaving like a teenaged girl. Nobody has offered me a film like Dil in ages. I guess I am past all that. Besides, I have evolved as an actress."

Madhuri says that she is open to offers, so long as the roles are "different and challenging". At present, she cannot afford to accept whatever comes her way because of a time constraint. Since she has a home to run in the USA, her availability to Hindi film producers is restricted.

"I love cooking for my husband," she exults. "So long I have been doing it in movies. But now it is the real thing. Of course, a lot of experimentation goes on because he too tries out his hand in the kitchen. We are both foodies. And this is quite a learning experience for both of us."

Madhuri’s husband, Srikant (Nene) is training to be a heart surgeon: "I went with him once to the operation theatre to see how they harvest a heart. What they do is, when the donor dies, they take his heart out and transplant it to a person who needs the heart. I have been with him on that..."

She narrates how she thought she would faint in the operation theatre at the sight of blood. "But I guess, becauseI was a science student, I found it very fascinating. I realised that it can be very stressful also, as there cannot be a second take when you cut open a person. You cannot say, ‘Sorry, I cut the wrong thing, can we do it again?’ The patient’s life is in your hands!"

Does Dr Nene show similar interest in her work?

"Not really," she giggles. "I showed him a bit of Gajagamini and the songs of Pukar. When he saw me in Gajagamini, he kept asking, "Who’s Shakuntala!" Of course, it is a very abstract film. But with Pukar also, he was all at sea. He is not used to seeing songs in films there. So I had to remind him of some of the Hollywood musicals on TCM and that put things in perspective for him!"

Right now, her only commitment in India is Devdas. "There’ve been many things written about the film, for and against. Well, now shooting is going on very smoothly. The reason why I am finishing Devdas before I go abroad is because by the time I come back next, the monsoon would have destroyed the sets."

(MF)