THE ART OF BEING SEEN

How Malaika Arora turned being watched into an art form - and outlasted everyone's expectations

- By Anushka Halve

Malaika Arora has spent nearly three decades in public view — and yet, there’s something elusive about her presence to this day. You think you know her: the dancer whose first steps on a moving train in “Chaiyya Chaiyya” from Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se.. (1998) became the blueprint for Bollywood sensuality; the woman who made 2010's “Munni Badnaam Hui” a cultural event; the face of fitness, wellness, and effortless glamour. Across every phase — dancer, judge, entrepreneur, performer — she’s managed to retain an air of authorship. But beneath the spectacle lies a contradiction that defines her: a performer who has made a career of being looked at, while remaining firmly in control of how she is seen.

“I think my entire career has been driven more by instinct than design,” she says. “I’ve never really sat down and mapped out a path. I’ve just followed what felt right at that time. Dance was my first love, and it opened doors to everything else I eventually did.”

The Evolution of Desire

If one were to trace her career through its most visible landmarks, it might read like a catalogue of the ways in which Bollywood has projected — and resisted — female desire. “Munni Badnaam Hui,” “Anarkali Disco Chali,” “Pandey Ji Seeti,” “Hello Hello,” “Aap Jaisa Koi” — each a marker of changing aesthetics, shifting body politics, and a performer whose presence has never been incidental.