Vidya-Sabyas desi girl act at Cannes is both audacious and wicked For the past week,we have been inundated daily with images of Freida Pinto,Vidya Balan and Sonam Kapoor at the worlds greatest fashion show: the Cannes Film Festivals red carpet. Pinto and Kapoor are winning with their princess waves,dressed in Dior and Dolce. Poor Ms Balan gets a constant thumbs-down for her lehengas,anarkalis and khadi saris,a tightly knotted bun and a nose-ring. Nath-ins working for Vidya,screams one headline. Bai-chi,comments a writer. Funnily,the wicked team that is Balan and her stylist,Sabyasachi Mukherjee,are giggling at the responses. Its exactly what we expected, says Mukherjee,over the phone from London,at the crack of a Sunday dawn. I had told Vidya only pockets of people will appreciate it,most people will be deriding her. She was ready, he says. Why wouldnt she be? Balan has arrived at where she is right on top of the Bollywood heap being derided. She was always ticked off for being plump,or not wearing her fashion with the pizzazz of the size-zero heroines. Balan fought back with powerhouse performances one after another,till she discovered a style-guide in Sabyasachi,who then turned her into a classical Indian goddess in Kanjeevarams,Benarasis and South silks. (To be honest,she also found another wildcat in stylist Niharika Khan,without whom neither the iconoclastic The Dirty Picture nor Balan would have been half as compelling.) Balan learned that to win the game,youve got to make your own rules,even if it means sometimes getting booed at from the stands. If it worked for her in ruthless Bollywood,it was sure to fly internationally too. The black-white anarkali,which she wore on her first appearance at Cannes with a veil on her head was adored by foreign paparazzi. Among a sea of too-pretty-to-be-stirring floor-sweepers,she stood out like an Indian princess. It was especially celebratory since the festival was celebrating 100 years of Indian movies. Balans co-jurors Nicole Kidman and Steven Spielberg swooned in disbelief; they complimented her over and over again. Cannes is high-octane glamour alright,but theres also a large intellectual lobby on its fringes that Balan has won over. Moreover,she isnt here as a Barbie actress selling hair products,shes here in the highest profile a jury member,a position only her talent and achievement have procured. If Balans 36-change wardrobe is called costume,the eyeball-grabber Sabya says a ball gown is costume too. What is its relevance to modern living? None, he says. Balans (and her stylists) game-plan was to give the world an India that was India-forward,and they seem to be shifting that paradigm wonderfully. Fashion is quickly moving away from being a global game with a uniform wardrobe to something thats far more relevant and rooted culturally. Sabya agrees wholeheartedly when he says: Luxury is created from a point of arrogance,not subjugation. If the French are arrogant about their heritage,we need to be too. Theres no more apologising about being Indian or exotic,now theres only showing it off as cleverly as you can. namratanow@gmail.com
