If we measure Kajol’s range as an actor and a human being on a musical scale, she is a full-blown soprano. There are no halfmeasures for this mercurial screen queen.
In a past interview, she agreed that the roles doing justice to her presence are not that frequent. “At the end of the day it’s all about how much justice you do to what’s given to you. I need a good producer and a director, like Karan Johar. A film works only when everyone gives his or her best.” Kajol’s best performance ever is in a sequence from Karan Johar film My Name Is Khan. But no one has seen it. The best sequence of this film, which is probably the best thing Kajol has done so far, was edited out due to the film’s length. It shows Kajol calling her relatives in India from the US after her son’s death to ask about the rituals to be conducted. The grief and confusion of a mother in an alien country is indescribable. Kajol nails it.
She is one of a kind. Whenever Kajol is in the room her voice is heard above all other sounds. She is the din diva and the djinn that comes out of the bottle every time she lights up the screen. Kajol loves to talk and she doesn’t filter her thoughts. They flow in a continuous stream of extreme consciousness of commonsensical pragmatism. Kajol likes to call a spade a spade. It started on the sets of Rahul Rawail’s Bekhudi and it continues to this day.
Kajol’s tongue spares none. When her pal Karan Johar offered her Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna Kajol was unconvinced by the part. The role of a woman in an unhappy marriage with Shah Rukh Khan (“Which woman would be unhappy with SRK and who would accept us as an incompatible jodi?”) went to Kajol’scousin Rani Mukerji who was the natural choice of all directors whom Kajol said no to.
And Kajol says no to more offers than any actor in India. Sanjay Leela Bhansali recalls chasing Kajol all the way to the interiors of Gujarat for his first film Khamoshi: The Musical where she called him for a narration and then completely forgot about the appointment, leaving the then-fledgling director waiting in the hotel lobby for six hours.
During the making of Indra Kumar’s Ishq, Aamir Khan told me Kajol was “badly behaved” and that hewould never work with her again.
He gladly did Fanaa with her.