Hitting above the belt, at the heart

doweshowbellyad=0; For all Shah Rukh Khan's unerring entertainment instinct at display in OSO, the movie would not have been quite the classic thing it is but for the magic of Deepika's virginal radiance (PTI Photo)Bollywood is teeming with great-looking babes. They have hour-glass figures with breasts like buns and asses like apples. Their legs are lean like rifles.Their eyes are electric. Their massed up hair is like clouds in a Kerala monsoon. You could read a prayer by the light of their smile.
All of them are bubbly enough to go to your head on a dry day. And there are so many of them. Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra, Mallika Sherawat, Bipasha Basu. The lovely looks of the moment.
You have seen them staring at you from magazine covers, hoardings, wallpapers, play cards, calendars, sidewalk drawings, the very air is their mirror and it endlessly reflects them everywhere.
And from everywhere they are throwing all that they have got at you. But what exactly is it that they're throwing? Sex. They're saying, you want sex, huh? All right, we'll lay you to kingdom come, and afterwards you can find your dinner in the bin, you moron.
The vengeful libertinism is all in the emasculating stare alone, perfected over long lonely hours before a pleasing mirror for your benefit. It's asking you if what you have got below the belt is up to scratch.
The rest of the gear endorses the stare: the hair blown back in a halo that frames the perfect face, hands akimbo, legs apart, the whole body an extension of an endless bury-the-bastard kind of pelvic thrust. You thought she was a lady. But the lady knows better. She has become a vamp. Which is what, she believes, you really want. Which is certainly what the canny producer wants. So she is giving it to you. Take it and live with it.
Consider for example the case of Sushmita Sen. It is difficult to come across a more studied persona in Bollywood. The mask she wears for the mass consumption is one of a dominatrix.
The poses she strikes with her face and body go only too well with the missing whip and leather. The mask is a result of an essentially hostile idea that what the masculine world wants is a sex-object. And our heroines are buying into the commodified image and giving it back to the consumer with interest. The process is a coarsening one and it involves the prostitution of the spirit.
Enter Deepika, pursued by Om and Shanti. Her retro looks - themselves a tribute to the softer appeal of Hema Malini of the 70s - are anything but hard or unforgiving. There is a sequence in OSO - easily the film of the decade - where Shanti's upwardly mobile husband - played by Arjun Rampal - says she is a stumbling block to his career, and that he has no option but to get rid of her.
The next moment the screen will go up in fire in the mother of all dowry deaths scene. In the face of assured extinction, in a total departure from every single mainstream Hindi movie that one can recall, Shanti tenderly caresses her prospective killer's face, as if to say, stop, no more, unbreak my heart now. The gesture conveys the unimaginable sadness of a relationship gone wrong. This muted move might be a deft touch from the very talented director Farah Khan, but the gesture defines both the character and the artiste.
The air about Deepika is delicate. Its message is one of hope and innocence. For all Shah Rukh Khan's unerring entertainment instinct at display in OSO, the movie would not have been quite the classic thing it is but for the magic of Deepika's virginal radiance, a quality of her beauty which seems, as in the much wronged Shanti's role in OSO, to take the world for a more friendly place, less ravaged by Original Sins.
It's, really, a more affectionate look at Creation. She conducts herself as if redemption is yet possible. The fragile reassurance of that rather Christian knowledge transmutes itself in her as a spirit more at peace with the world. Deepika's persona is therefore complementary, not competitive in essence. You could love her, not just lust after her.
This offers a new take for Bollywood. It has now the freedom to be less harsh, less coarse, less typecast in the conception of its female characters. Perhaps even relapse into innocence, which Deepika has effortlessly made fashionable. You don't have to compulsively strip and dance as if every man's tumescence is your resentful responsibility. You don't need to always go for the audience's balls. You could reach higher, touch its heart. This sounds corny. But it could be a big deal in an industry that loves to mistake a few synchronised dances slapped around a romance as a substitute for a storyline. Deepika sanctions freedom for a more gracious future. Exit vamp. Enter lady.