Madhuri Dixit turned 41 on May 15. But if you catch a glance of one of Bollywood’s most successful actress you wouldn’t ever believe her age! From balancing her personal life, to staying out of the media limelight and then still maintaining a close relationship with her fans in India, Mads as well love to call her, has done it all.

No heroine, in recent times, has got her act together on the silver screen the way Madhuri Dixit has done. Girija Rajendran on the spell Madhuri Dixit casts on the audience.

The diva has left behind her life of fame and glory and taken refuge in domestic bliss. But a nation obsessed with her famous electric smile and the rhythm of her dance moves is yet to forget her. India has called Madhuri Dixit back once again, this time to confer the title of Padma Shri, and the lady returns for the first time since the release of her comeback film Aaja Nachle last November.

I have vowed never to make fun of Pandit Bindeshwar Bhalerao, the astrologer and his companion, his parrot, the parrot dressed in velvet green robes like a prince from some place in good old Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. And a beak which looked more royal than the crown of a prince.

Gloom was palpable in the posh offices of Mumbai’s gossip magazines on the evening of November 4. And even the most inventive, hard-hitting gossip writers wore crestfallen looks when Madhuri Dixit inflicted the bloodiest blow ever dealt by any superstar on them, when she made public her marriage to Dr Shriram Nene, a noted Los Angeles-based surgeon on October 17. The wedding which was performed according to simple Vedic rites took place before a select group that included her relatives and Rakesh Nath, her right hand man for twelve years.

Every film journalist who has met her has a favourite MD (Madhuri Dixit) story. MD stories are not about diva tantrums, eccentricity or mood swings. Instead everyone raves about her beauty. My favourite one is actually not my own but was told to me by a veteran film journalist who met Madhuri in the summer of 1997 on the sets of Dil To Pagal Hai. She was shooting the Arre Re Arre track and looked ethereal in white. Through his most memorable interview, he said, he didn’t make eye contact with Madhuri. “I was scared,” he said “that my gaze would stray.”