It’s time for Mallika Sherawat to put her attempts to conquer the West behind her. At least, for now. Bollywood is willing to give her another chance. Mallika Sherawat’s nine-minute appearance in The Myth may or may not be received with the audacious enthusiasm that she had hoped for. But everyone’s talking about how she was “all over” Jackie Chan. And about her blue and red saris ? one for the day and the other during the night ? that she wore during the premiere of Stanley Tong’s film.

However, her belated attempts at Indianness seem a little out of sync with the reality regarding her career. “She looked rather fetching in the two lovely saris that she had put on for the occasion,” said one of her costars. “But wouldn’t it have made more sense to wear those saris at Cannes where she chose to do those eye-popping things with dresses four sizes too small for her?”

Back home, Mallika seems to have put aside The Myth and is now trying to consolidate her position in the movies at home. Currently, she’s shooting for two back-to-back Hindi films, both lighthearted comedies where she gets to be paired with two extremely disparate costars. In Satish Kaushik’s Shaadi Se Pehle, she plays Suniel Shetty’s sister in love with Akshaye Khanna, while in Saket Chowdhary’s Pyar Ke Side Effects, she plays a spirited Jatni and is paired with Rahul Bose. Both are essentially comedies where Mallika gets to have a lot of fun. “Her comic timing is very good. She’s very hard-working and gives all of herself to every shot,” says Rahul Bose. “This film is bound to take her very far.”

Most bigwigs in Bollywood feel she can retrieve her post-Murder position if she only only gets her act together. The ball is in Ms Sherawat’s court.