How many of us would remember that Katrina Kaif made her debut in a film BOOM that was produced by Jackie Shroff's wife Aisha Shroff, where she strutted around the landscape of the cinematic oeuvre in a bikini? Well, bikini as a tool to launch a career has been there in vogue in the world of Hindi cinema for quite a long time. Sonam had done it for VIJAY, a Yash Chopra film, but normally the bikini has been used as a device by the new starlets probably to display their assets on the silver screen and to use it as a channel vehicle to promote the career.
But in the case of Katrina Kaif, who has made a successful career for herself in the world of Hindi cinema during the last decade or so when she made her debut, was it necessary to adorn a bikini in DHOOM 3 opposite Aamir Khan? Or is it a sign of growing desperation or a sort of announcing to the world that she is now no more associated with the world of Salman Khan and therefore she could experiment with her looks and presentations on the silver screen!
Till the time she was associated with Salman Khan Katrina Kaif was never shown on the silver screen in various films that she acted in displaying the skin. But she took on a new leaf with JAB TAK HAI JAAN where she enacted quite a lot of bold scenes and also probably for the first time in her acting career did a lovemaking scene with Shah Rukh Khan on the screen which was shot through and through with sexuality, oomph, glitz, glamour, and oodles of raw passion.
One could also argue that it is coming of age for Katrina Kaif in the world of Hindi cinema. She is creating new benchmarks for her ilk by shedding the inhibitions in either emerging as the item girl in demand for the new year celebrations after she set the stage on fire with her Chickni Chameli song in AGNEEPATH or being associated with a passionate kiss on the screen as she did in JAB TAK HAI JAAN or for that matter the lovemaking scene. Incidentally, there is one more scene which is considered one of the ultimate elixirs, the apogee of expressing sexual inclinations- it being she shaving Shah Rukh Khan, and this scene of a female actress shaving the male counterpart has been used as a metaphor umpteen number of times in the world of cinema to express love and physical intimacy, but it has been a rare occasion in the world of Hindi cinema.
Katrina Kaif is not blowing her lone trumpet though. There is an Anushka Sharma as well, who did not think twice before uttering the dialogue in JTHJ that she would like to have sex with eligible boys around the world before settling down in life, and she displays this boldness in MATRU KI BIJLEE KA MANDOLA.
Maybe, one should not see too much into whatever is being undertaken by Katrina Kaif or Anushka Sharma and others of her like and should see it as coming of age of Indian cinema where now the female actors are shedding their inhibitions to express sexuality on screen. It indeed is a bold step forward from the times when the moments of intimacy on the screen in Hindi cinema where shown by flowers entwining into each other.
