Kareena-Priyanka The New Besties In Town

If you saw the bonding between the two gorgeous Bollywood divas Kareena Kapoor Khan and Priyanka Chopra Jonas on Karan Johar’s talk show, you would probably be wondering if the close kinship between the two ladies goes back a long way.

It doesn’t.There was a time when there was no love lost between the ladies. I still remember both Kareena and Priyanka cribbing about one another to me. Obviously I can’t reveal details. But they somehow never got along.I remember once they were both performers at concert programme abroad. When Priyanka tried to say hello to Kareena she got a frozen look.

Ouch!

All that is the past now. Karan Johar who is Kareena’s sort-of adopted brother(Kareena told me once, ‘Karan is the brother my sister Karisma and I had never had’) probably because Karan is the only notable man in Bollywood who would want to be a brother to Kareena, got the two ladies to share the conversational couch.

And I must the evening was far more enlightening than anything I’ve seen on Karan’s show this season. Curiously, Kareena was more chatty, lively, spirited voluble , funny and anecdotal than Priyanka who seemed to be a bit in awe the beautiful Bebo. Priyanka is generally full of animation and vitality. Here she seemed a little tongue-tied by her colleague.And why not?Conquering the West is fine. But sitting next to Kareena Kapoor Khan is a high on another level. Right?

The one thing that emerged from the seriously engaging chat was Kareena’s complete disinterest in conquering the West.In this she is one with the other Khan superstars Shah Rukh, Aamir, Salman and even Saif. None of them is keen on doing Hollywood films.

I remember Kareena wondering aloud about Priyanka’s fierce determination to conquer the West. It was more curiosity than envy. This was when Priyanka had just started out in the West. Now when Priyanka is a name in the West and a Missus like Kareena it was good to see them share reminiscences and thoughts as two extremely attractive married women who are so confident in their own space.

I think someone should cast Kareena and Priyanka together. They had done a film together Aetraaz at the beginning of Priyanka’s career. But they had no scenes together. I’d like to see them cast as two buddies on a pleasure trip letting loose their most basic instincts. Two female heroes showing the world that the boxoffice can be conquered by them if given the right script.

Priyanka and Kareena represent star power at its best. They don’t need any of the male A-listers in their films. They can drive the boxoffice on their own steam. But for that they need a director like Zoya Akhtar or Abhishek Choubey . We also need to stop believing that it’s the male superstars who run the film business.

The truth is, Kareena is the fifth superstar Khan of Bollywood.And Priyanka the first Chopra to have hit the headlines as a hero.So many Khans, Kumars, Kapoors have made it to the top. I can’t remember a single Chopra (or for that matter Jonas) to have conquered showbiz in India.