Born Reema Lamba, this 1.69m ''bombshell'' is a Delhi University graduate. She is originally a jatt, or so she claims, and currently lives in Mumbai. Her parents do not wish to have to do anything with her, and the only family member who is proud of her is her brother, Vikram. Incidentally, she is the first Indian woman who got an offer to pose nude for Playboy magazine, but refused due to her morals and upbringing.
Quotes : ''I've slogged like crazy to get where I am. And those who think it's just my body that got me where I am, they should take a look at the others who have rushed in after me. They haven't gone beyond their first feverish film''.
To quote her on another point, she has said that she has had to run away from home after completing graduation in 2002 from Delhi as she wanted to be an actress and always knew that her orthodox family would never let her be one.
Hence if one tries to analyze the reasons behind her cameo dialogues and questionable roles, perhaps we do get an insight into the mind of a strong-willed, but quite stupid and narrow minded person. These may be strong words but I shall try my best to explain their usage.
To run away from one's family with whom she has shared the larger part of her life is no joke, and no weak-hearted person could have emulated her. So one up to her in this regard.
Next, she started on her first film as Reema Lamba in Jeena Sirf Mere Liye, a washout which I have not bothered to watch. In the meantime, she had been married, but she followed it up by divorcing her husband for reasons best known to her. Now she changes her name to a more attractive(?) Mallika Sherawat and moves on to star in Khwaish, a film known more to the public for its 17 smooches than for the material of the film. At this point in her life, the woman discovers the uproar the smooches has generated. For an industry where smooches are taboo, and depicted mostly at convenient camera angles or through flowers and such non-sensical stuff, she scored once again. The temperamental mind of the movie-goer(Remember in 2002-04 most films flopped as the movie watchers wanted something new) accepted her as the new sex symbol.
So she moved up one step in her life, albeit as the nation's sex symbol. One more point to her credit. What begins from here, is her downfall in my opinion. What she could have done was to have moved onto better films which gave her aesthetically challenging roles, attracted better banners....instead, she moved on to the Mahesh Bhatt camp and starred in Murder, which is essentially a sleazy slick from a very clever director. It is sad to see the types of films coming out of the Mahesh Bhatt camp after Sir(1993) et al, but Bhatt basically utilized this wannabe ''next-in-thing'' who was beginning to rope in wide eyed sex starved idiots in the hope for more skin show. And Mallika was Bhatt's best trump card - she was known, and she was eager to do the scenes and get more popularity. No other siren would have gived the film more hype(if they agreed to do it in the first place). Sherawat says Murder is aesthetically packaged....if that is aesthetically packaged, Pamela Anderson's Home Video should be a course in Sex Education for Class X students.
However, Murder was a hit. And for the forsaken woman that she was, this was a tremendous boost to her ego. As her bosom expanded day by day, so did her sharp tongue and price tag. She had come to the stage where directors were all over her, producers willing to pay her more for a more vulgar movie, and she gleefully banks on such people and increases her popularity among the idiot masses through photo-ops or tongue-in-cheek remarks. I sometimes feel that she is the female version of Navjyot Siddhu...where Siddhu attempts to be humorous and overdoes it enormously, she overdoses on her glamour quotient.
After all, she has no real ''body of work'' behind her to claim she is the new diva/actress of the next/current generation. Agreed, she has The Myth to her credit...but just ask the director how many Indian actresses had refused that role. If she claims to be bold...why not play Nandita Das' role in Fire or Kareena's role in Chameli ? Skin show in our country is bold, but it goes wasted if the only utilization is in the outburst of testosterone in the largely non-exposed mass of the Indian public, who go to have their paisa-vasool.
Even in the recent hullabaloo in the Cannes Film festival, she commented that she was there to kick some bigtime hollywood ass....and people say that it was the quote of the event! On the 50th anniversary of Satyajit Ray's Panther Pachali, the first Indian Film to receive a Golden Lion, and of the only Indian Director who got an Oscar, such comments by an Indian actress at Cannes Film Festival is atrocious. I wonder if she even knew about the importance of the event, the anniversary aspect and the fact that each individual there represents the culture of the country she belongs to. I am much more proud of a Nandita Das sharing the stage with a Bosnian Director and Salma Hayek on the Juror's Bench and commenting on the films that are made...Mallika's shameless self-promotion is a loud appeal, and somewhat frantic call to people to get herself attention. When she looks back on her pictures, her films, her quotes, all the wrong attention she got, I wonder how she'll be able to stand tall before her children, or peacefully go to her deathbed.
So, in retrospective, I find that Mallika did indeed start out as a strong lady from humble backgrounds where she did face much opposition....but gradually she died out where integrity counted. You really cannot stand high too long on trash, sex-oriented films. Kate Winslet, Elizabeth Taylor, Sharon Stone, you name them...many exposed intially in the name of cinema and did progress to fabulous movies. And no one remembers them for their sex scenes - their craft and body of work pulls the audience to their films. Which is what Mallika should have done, and in case she is listening, is what she should do. Silicone doesn't matter, you have to include all of Chemistry in this section. Mallika is one experiment gone absurdly bad.
And in the end, you just end up feeling sorry for someone who desperately wanted fame and money through all the wrong ways, and I doubt she'll ever be bestowed with everything she wants to achieve simply because her head is on the clouds and not on her shoulders where they should be....at no point of time will leading actors in the industry like the Big B, Abhishek, Hrithik, Salman, Aamir or SRK will want to work with her....Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta and company are far better actors, and individuals.
For the people who India are proud of, such as Bhagat Singh, C.V. Raman, Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Waheeda Rahman, Guru Dutt, our freedom fighters, Prithviraj Kapoor, Naushad et al....how does Mallika Sherawat even possess a iota of ''quality'' to represent the culture of India ? If India has to resort to the steamy siren of ''Murder'' as the cult icon of the present generation, I shudder to think what will become of us. For people still in doubt, go watch Metallica's video of the song, Turn The Page...it might make you think.
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