Guess what was the most sarcastic joke in Bollywood recently? Nobody knew who the heroine of Agneepath was? That's because Katrina ‘Chikni Chameli' Kaif had done some big damage that Priyanka Chopra was finding hard to repair! Bipasha Basu's alleged relationship with co-star Rana Dagubatti couldn't bring the film Dum Maaro Dum more publicity than Deepika Padukone's hippie item number ‘Mit Jaaye Gum' in the film. After Malaika Arora Khan's sizzling Munni act in Dabanng threatening to overshadow her, Sonakshi Sinha will now have to face the heat with Chitrangada Singh's item number in her upcoming film, Joker! What's more? To revive interest in a film that has been a couple of years in the making, Vidhu Vinod Chopra has roped in his protégé Vidya Balan for an item number in his production Ferrari Ki Sawaari.

As you may rightly conclude, ‘item' is no longer a dirty word. The Chamelis, Munnis, Sheilas and Razias are having a kill at the box office and such is the power of the item number that A-list heroines are now nudging out the ‘dirty' item girl and churning out the oomph themselves. But the bigger the heroine, the greater is the drama associated with the item song. Here's discussing the Great Indian Item Number!

Was Madhuri Dixit the first item heroine? If you consider a fully clothed A-lister shaking a leg to fun lyrics, she probably was. Remember, ‘Mere Pyar Ka Ras Zara Chakhna' from the 1998 Amitabh-Govinda starrer Chote Miyan Bade Miyan? She was brought in to lift the film and she did so with great élan. Nobody remembers any other song from the movie. But her first real item number was way back in 1993. ‘Choli Ke Peeche' from Khalnayak even qualified as an item with raunchy lyrics and killer moves. Madhuri had it in her to do that sizzling dance and act too in the same film.

Sushmita Sen created magic too in the Karisma-Hrithik starrer Fiza (2000) with ‘Mehboob Mere'. Probably the makers thought that slotting Karisma and Hrithik as brother-sister would not work as much as a shimming Sushmita. They were right.

In 2002, much before her ‘Kajraa Re' act, Aishwarya Rai lent some item power to the film Shakti – The Power with Shah Rukh Khan in a song called ‘Ishq Kamina.' Somewhere down the line, however, specialists started being roped in for masala songs.

Malaika Arora Khan, Mallika Sherawat, Rakhi Sawant and Yana Gupta may have wowed audiences thereafter with their moves for a long time, but then the leading ladies of Bollywood realised that the three-minute item song was causing them more loss than they could have ever imagined. They were higher on the music charts, not to mention the most played in pubs and at parties. They had better recall value and they were more in demand at award functions which could easily fetch them more moolah than acting in a three-hour film.


PRIYANKA CHOPRA