Mandira Bedi not out

Mandira Bedi has been trashed as the vacuous, vanilla and completely undeserving anchor of cricket shows. But she hung in there and won (some) naysayers over. Today she's thrilled to be associated with the sport, even though her latest film about the game, Meerabai Not Out, didn't do too well.

‘If you're going to shoot me, you'll have to give me a few minutes to do my make-up." These are Mandira Bedi's first words to me, after a brief greeting. She's perfectly turned out, in a snug T-shirt and trousers, and with absolutely nothing on her face but a warm smile, but that's not good enough. For her.

"Just give me seven-and-a-half minutes," she says, bounding up the stairs of her Bandra home. After exactly 10, she's back, all smoky eyes, contoured cheeks and the air of a tease about her. She smiles coquettishly for the camera, and slightly arches her back to stand in various sexy poses. That's when it strikes me: It takes so little for Mandira to be completely transformed. She flits between personae like a pro: girl-next-door one minute, sex kitten the next.

But then, Mandira's life has been all about transformations. Her career —and by extension, her personal life —has veered wildly from one image to another, and it's hard to tell which one is the real Mandira. The "SoBo chic" who was too snobby to even think of a career in cinema; the small-screen activist; the TV temptress; or the second lead in a blockbuster Hindi film? Or is she what she plays in her latest film, Meerabai Not Out, a cricket fan?

Here's the irony: After 13 years in show business, the one thing people best remember Mandira as is the spaghetti straps-wearing anchor for the 2003 World Cup show, Extra Innings. "Eight years of acting have been completely forgotten," says Bedi. "People think of me only as a host for cricket shows now."

That's not bad for an actress who —perhaps because she was picky about roles offered to her (and I mean this is in a good way) — might've have remained an also-ran. After playing the meek sister in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Bedi was flooded with offers to play a sister or a bhabhi. But she turned most people down, including another Yashraj offer recently. "It doesn't have to be the heroine's part, but it should be a role that contributes to the storyline. It should be pivotal in some way," she says. That's why she did one of the stories in Dus Kahaniyan — it was "edgy, slightly negative, with a twist in the tale".

And while other TV debutantes may shy away from playing a vamp, Bedi readily took on the part of Mandira in the soap Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhie Bahu Thi. "I love doing edgier stuff, which is why I accepted the role of Mandira. I was told it's a grey character and shows 'the other woman' in a slightly different light. I wanted people to talk about her and say that she was mean bitch, but she is also nice." When it didn't quite pan out that way, Bedi walked out of one of the highest-rated shows on TV. "The character went from nasty to evil. Every time she plotted, she would tap her fingers to a menacing background score. Who does that?" says Bedi. "I couldn't do it anymore." She texted Ekta Kapoor to say she was no longer convinced about her role, and quit.

Yet walking away from big banner films and serials has not been the hardest thing Mandira's ever done. Convincing people that she does belong in the all-male domain of the cricket world has. "That was the biggest challenge for me," she says. When she first appeared on TV, she was dissed for being vacuous, being ignorant about the game and (chauvinistic viewers guessed) spending way too much time on her look and clothes. "I was seen as this bimbo who would only giggle and smile her way through the show," says Bedi about the role of a lifetime that she landed quite by accident, while cheering India on during a tournament in Sri Lanka.

"Nothing hurt me more than being called an airhead." It was also disconcerting, she says, that the thing that was least discussed in the preliminary preparations — her attire — was suddenly the focus of all attention. "I had merely suggested that I wear a saree during the India matches, and Western casuals at other times," says Bedi. "The decision was taken in five minutes, and never discussed again." It's going to tail her for the rest of her life, though. When the ribbing and sniggering got too much, Bedi offered to step down. She was told instead, to hang on. And by the end of the 40-odd days the World Cup lasted, she managed to bring some viewers and critics around.

One commentator told her, to her face, that he hated her the first time she came on TV. "But over the tournament, you managed to change my mind," he said. The question of whether or not Mandira knows enough about cricket to actually host a show — well, the jury's still out on that. But Bedi says during her first, surprise audition, she did quite ok. Of the 20 or 22 questions fired at her —  from what is a yorker, to what is Saurav Ganguly's wife's name —- she got most of them right. But smart cookie that she is, Mandira found a way out. "I know my limitations. I can't be a Charu Sharma and talk technical," she says. "Instead, I try to bring a certain energy to the show and ask  questions people would want to ask, even if the pundits think they're basic." Five years later, there are still people who feel Bedi has no business being in cricket. "But there were many who accepted me," she says.

So that when Mandira returned from her World Cup stint, it was to a changed India. Suddenly, she found she was being associated with cricket. More hosting jobs came her way, and the media was queuing up — sometimes ill-advisedly — to get her views on the Harbhajan controversy, the IPL, the cheerleaders and such. Mandira's hosted about 100 corporate events and 10 big shows till now. "I'm blessed to be associated with the game," she says. So when her husband, filmmaker Raj Kaushal, came up with the idea of a movie about a cricket fan, he didn't have to look too far.

Meerabai Not Out features Mandira as a math teacher who's also mad about Kumble — a player Bedi actually thinks of as an "unsung hero". Released a week after the terror attacks — and perhaps because of a weak script — the film didn't do too well. Knowing Mandira, she'll take that in her stride too. She doesn't need a hit film to underscore her contribution to the game. For the dozens of female anchors on sports shows today, it was enough that she kicked down the door of a Boy's Only club. And left the field wide open for them.
l_ghosh@dnaindia.net