Deepika Padukone – The real success story of 2013!

When the captains of the industry and their wives vie to get a picture of hers clicked for posterity and when even her uncle Nandan Nilekani requests Deepika Padukone to share the frame with her to increase his “glamour quotient”, it indeed is the moment of reckoning for Deepika Padukone. Indeed, she has arrived with a bang and is one of the most scintillating success stories for the year 2013 what with four of her films CHENNAI EXPRESS (200 crores plus), RACE 2 (around 100 crores), YEH JAWAANI HAI DEEWANI (100 crore plus) and GOLIYON KI RAASLEELA RAM-LEELA (100 crore plus) being among the elite category of marquee films which have done business of 100 crores and above.
No wonder Deepika Padukone was the toast of the evening at the Economic Awards for Corporate Excellence where she was perhaps the only invitee sharing the stage with literally who’s who of the Indian economy, be it the Finance Minister, the captains of the industry , the thinkers, the bankers etc. She is also the only star in the year 2013 who has appeared on the cover story of a news magazine and the issue was a total sell out, underlining the fact that indeed Deepika Padukone has carved a niche for herself in the film industry, a niche that is not characterized by the quotient of glamour alone, but by the ingredient of performance.
Even Kareena Kapoor in the latest show on Koffee With Karan went on record to inform that she had recommended to Saif to cast Deepika Padukone in COCKTAIL. Deepika Padukone has with her four films during 2013 changed the paradigm of the way in which the role of a female actor is concerned, and underlined the point that equal footage need to be given to a female star as well, as she commands eyeballs at the box-office on her own and not in conjunction with a male star as a pair.
She is also unabashed about being sexually sensual, a fact which she brought to relief through her role in COCKTAIL but took it to the new heights in GOLIYON KI RAASLEELA RAM-LEELA where she has expressed her sexuality as a part of her persona. This is an outlier moment for Hindi cinema, as for the heroine expression of sexuality was never overt but covert, however, besides Vidya Balan (who did it in THE DIRTY PICTURE), it’s Deepika Padukone who has raised the bar and has beckoned the females of the world to be confident of the sexuality that characterizes a female and to express it with elan and panache. She demonstrated it with conviction in GOLIYON KI RAASLEELA RAM-LEELA where she had the conviction to go and kiss an unknown person in the form of Ranveer Singh, and this incident happened in Hindi cinema after more than a decade when Preity Zinta on the eve of her debut in DIL SE had the guts and conviction to ask Shahrukh Khan whether he was a virgin!
2014 indeed would be a year of consolidation for Deepika Padukone as she is starring in Sooraj Barjatya’s new film with Salman Khan and again would be featuring opposite her former lover Ranbir Kapoor in Imtiaz Ali’s next! Would it stoke the latent fire in the ex-lovers? 2014 indeed would be the year to watch out for, for Deepika Padukone.