You’ve got to grant it to Vidya Balan. Unlike a lot of girls (read: Deepika, Katrina, Priyanka, Lara Dutta) who have denied their relationships like vestal virgins only to be caught lying a few months later, Vidya has not denied anywhere that she is seeing UTV executive Siddharth Roy Kapur. On the contrary, she has been happily answering congratulatory messages with hugs and smileys.

Actually this is one instance when the media have come out looking like outdated old wives. Which era is the media talking about when it carries time-barred headlines like, Hindi cinema is losing a superb actress to the institution of marriage? For Pete’s sake, we’re in 2011. It’s a time when marriage and retiring from films do not go hand in hand for any actress. Giving up her acting career is something that must have crossed neither Vidya’s mind nor Siddharth’s, given that they are both savvy Mumbai-bred filmwallahs with a lot of respect for each other’s work. So marriage (whenever it happens) does not spell finis to Vidya Balan’s career.

Besides, Vidya is not in the nubile heroine league where marriage may dent her young and available image. What difference would Vidya’s marital status make to Ishqiya (where she played a merry widow) or No One Killed Jessica (where she was single woman Sabrina Lall who has still not found herself a man) or to her forthcoming movies like Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (where she is shown pregnant) or to Dirty Picture (patterned on the late actress Silk Smitha’s life story)? So to cluck with false sympathy that just when her career is on an upswing we’re “losing her” to the “institution of marriage” makes the journos who write them seem like relics. Obviously, Hindi film stars have moved forward, the media have not.

While Vidya is blooming with all the right things happening in her life and career, someone who is right at the top of the commercial heap is looking pretty edgy. When Katrina Kaif was speedily climbing the career ladder and had the unstinted security of a big name like Salman Khan and his family backing her, she was bubbly, voluble, articulate and clearly ecstatic. In fact, she startled one and all very early in her career by comfortably fielding questions about Salman, ready with an answer that gave nothing away. She managed it admirably with no trace of annoyance, rather like a pro who anticipated the curiosity and was prepared for it.

Today, there is a perceptible vulnerability about her that wasn’t there when she started out. Salman may still be her well-wisher but he is clearly not her man anymore. In her equation with Ranbir Kapoor, an intimacy that sees dramatic changes from day to day, Katrina is not as secure as she was with the much older actor. There is an ‘alone-ness’ about her (not loneliness), the kind you’d see in a working girl in Mumbai who’s left to her own devices personally and otherwise. Katrina may be better placed than most other working women because she can afford to hire staff to take care of every department, including business deals and public relations. But to handle the dips and highs in her emotions, keep her apartment running smoothly, lead a demanding lifestyle where she has to always look her best and be at her best and know that every move she makes will go under a public scanner is like constantly firefighting on several fronts. Add the IT raids as a new irritant.

Also, the adrenaline rush in knowing that you are the most exciting new thing on the block and everybody else is senior to you has been replaced by a tiny trace of anxiety. Yes, Katrina is at the top and still climbing. But she’s already moved into slightly senior space with younger girls like Deepika, Sonam and Sonakshi sniping at her heels. That position, along with an uncertain relationship with Ranbir, has turned her more wary than cheery. Fortunately, Katrina is naturally blessed with professionalism and a voluble personality. So even if she’s not exactly bubbling over, she is still well spoken and articulate. Only the barbed wire around her has become a little more forbidding than it used to be.

Heard this? Someone close to Salman says they’re all scared that the way he’s going he’ll one day suddenly produce a Maanyata in his life. Salman has always closely followed Sanjay Dutt — the body-proud actor fond of gymming, girls and the wild life, topped with a brush with the law. In his late forties, Sanju finally settled down with Maanyata who cooks and runs a neat home for him. Salman will soon find himself a similar wife, shivers his friend — and the late forties aren’t too far away.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal