Sonakshi-The Survivor Who Refuses To Surrender

Ali Peter John

If there was a genuine award for an actress who has had the maximum opportunities in a limited time and has still not made it as she should have, it would certainly have to go to Sonakshi Sinha...

If there are some or more people who would have different opinions from the one I have about Sonakshi, they have to just have a quick look at the mixed bag of films that she has done and how they have not made it as successfully as they should have to make her rank among the top few.

She started off with a bang with Salman Khan in“Dabangg"and proved that she was a star all on her own and not just because she was the daughter of Shotgun Sinha and Poonam Sinha, who were stars in their own right. It was going to be the biggest hit of her career, even though she did not have much of a role in which she could prove her mettle as an actress.

She had a whole lot of opportunities that followed, but with the exceptions of a few, she was looked at as one more fish in the ocean who was there, but was really not there. The films she did were not the right kind of films that could take her to the right places, but the fact that she has stayed on in the race is no mean feat.

Among the films in which Sonakshi, the star could make some impact after “Dabangg"(Salman Khan) were “Rowdy Rathore"(Akshay Kumar) ,“Son of Sardaar"(Ajay Devgn),“Dabangg 2"(Salman Khan again), “Lootera"(Ranveer Singh),“Lingaa"(Rajnikanth),“Akira"(heroine oriented) ,”Kalank"(one of the many stars who together couldn't save the film from being a ‘kalank'at the box-office),“Dabangg 3"(needless to say with the Dabangg hero).

She has been one of those actresses who has sadly not been as steady as a leading heroine should be. It could be because of her own choice or because of the only options she had, but history doesn't look at all that, it only looks at the good work put in by any actor or actress to add them to its list of artists to remember and to date, Sonakshi has not been successful in wooing history with her histrionics.

She has been a victim of some cruel and ruthless critics for the work she has done and she has been loved by the people who really matter. But, even as an admirer of her as an individual and the entire Sinha family, I still feel that she has a long way to catch up and she is already thirty-two now.

Will her upcoming release“Khandaani Shafakhana"work the magic she really needs at this stage of her career?

 Sonakshi Sinha is once again out to entertain with that difference which was essential for her to let her admirers and critics know that she still has the fire to fight back in her.

The film, starring Sonakshi, Varun Sharma and Badshah in the lead; deals with the subject of sex and the abnormities of it. The film is a very bold step taken by Sonakshi and the team of “Khandaani Shafakhana", as after“Vicky Donor" and “Shubh Mangal Savdhan", the film deals with the similar subject but, in a very ‘poised manner'. That too, with a female lead! Also, this is not the first time that Sonakshi hasn’t shied away from taking such a risk. In the past, she has given life to the characters like Akira, which was again a solo-lead with a very different theme. In “Ittefaq", she dared to play the villain. And, in massy films like the “Dabangg" franchise and “Lootera", Sonakshi played her parts doing justice to them.

Apart from the fact that this is the first female-centric film dealing with the subject of sex, what is interesting is the unexpected combination of the main leads. While Sonakshi plays a docile middle-class  girl trying to manage his uncle’s old pharmacy...

The wait then is for one more Sonakshi with one more daring opportunity and it is in how she has faced it that will depend the future of an actress who deserved much more than she has received a long time ago...

And yet the game is far, far from gone from the hands of the survivor who refuses to surrender and being the daughter of a survivor like Shatrughan Sinha will not think of surrendering easily.

Khel abhi baaki hai, Sonakshi jaise Khiladi itni aasaani se haar nahi maante.

IT'S HIGH TIME SOME RUMOURS ARE KILLED BEFORE THEY GROW MORE DANGEROUS

There have been all kinds of attempts made to know the behaviour, nature and attitude of human beings. The one thing we have all taken for granted is the way rumours are born and how they spread and go viral as it is described in today's lingo...

And if there is one field of life where rumours thrive from life to death and every the time between life and death and even the life after death, it is this world of films. How many hundreds of rumours must have been born and spread and luckily for some nipped in the bud? To think of it, all these growing number of magazines and moreso now with all these growing number of channels and websites have prospered and continue to prosper as long as the thirst or rather the hunger for rumours and gossip is a way of life.

How many rumours and gossips about young actors and their roaring affairs have we seen taking birth eversince the beginning of the industry? How many celebrities, especially stars at their peak have been ‘killed' even though they are very much alive? And how many children have been the subjects for rumours about who their star parents are?

This is not a present day phenomenon, but has been in existence even in the times when stars like K.N Singh, Shobhana Samartath and others in the fifties were the ruling stars in.

This kind of a rumour reached a new high when Dimple Kapadia made her debut in Raj Kapoor's “Bobby" and it seemed like the entire country had no other work but to spread rumours and speculate about stories of the young Dimple being the daughter of Raj and Nargis who were said to have had a steamy affair when they worked together in about 17 to 18 films together and till Nargis walked out of R.K to do the role of her lifetime in Mehboob Khan's “Mother India" and then never even met each other, forget working together.

The stories about Dharmendra and Hema Malini are too many to be talked about here, but they even added strength to all the rumours about them and got married even though Dharmendra was a married man with grown up children and Dharmendra and Hema had their own daughters in Esha and Ahaana and are now grandparents.

But, if you ask me as a close observer of this industry, I think there has never been a stronger rumours about Shatrughan Sinha and Reena Roy who formed a formidable romantic team in the seventies, doing 17 films together which was reason enough for people who love spreading rumours about the new generation actress, Sonakshi Sinha bearing a striking resemblance to the young Reena Roy. There are women who sit in clubs playing rummy, there are boys and girls who are younger than Sonakshi and there are even old men and women in homes for the aged who spend hours debating on whether Sonakshi resembles Reena Roy or whether she could be the daughter (?) of Shatru and Reena. They even go into serious calculation of the years when Shatru and Reena were supposed to have had their affair and how Sonakshi's age today (32) doesn't match the time when the Shotgun and Reena affair was all but over and Shatru married his old-time girlfriend Poonam Chandiramani and Reena married the Pakistani cricketer Mohsin Khan..

It seems like ages have passed but the stories of these rumours don't seem to end and if one goes by human nature, I don't think such stories can ever end. Like the Dev Anand and Suraiya genuine love affair ended more than fifty years ago when Suraiya's grandmother made her fling the ring a poorer star like Dev into the sea outside Govind Niwas on Marine Drive, but even children of today know about the Dev and Suraiya affair and the Raj Kapoor and Nargis affair and how many wives Kishore Kumar had or whether the eighty-five year old Ashok Kumar had an affair with a struggling actress called Tina Ghai.....

These rumours are like forever and as for the rumours of the affairs of the stars of today, I or anyone else cannot say, because you never know when they start one affair, end it and then start another because as they say having rumours spread about you is very much a part of the buisness of film entertainment..

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