Whose side are you on? Madhur Bhandarkar and UTV or the Bachchan mom-to-be who’s playing her favourite role of damsel in distress? While pregnancy clauses and “it’s a woman’s prerogative to have a baby” are eating up newsprint and TV time, it’s laughable when someone like Sushmita Sen comes out “in support of Ash”.

Now Sen may be a warm person and a great mother to her two adopted daughters, but she has hardly been the epitome of professionalism. Stories of drunken evenings and fragile emotions, topped with finishing her first director’s marriage, marked her first outing as an actress when she filmed Dastak in Mauritius with much-smitten director Vikram Bhatt. Years later, Bhatt’s semi-autobiographical version of that extra-marital tangle — which he put into a film titled Ankahee — showed the actress in such a hyper emotional state that it actually turned out to be the story of a woman who put her men and personal emotions before her work. It was certainly not the picture of a professional. In fact, this has been obvious right from the beginning as Sushmita has often disappeared for months on end only to re-surface too out-of-shape for her job as an actress. Svelte, sensuous and successful in films like Main Hoon Naa and Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya, if Sushmita didn’t stay at the top like Aishwarya, it was solely because she gave her personal life preference over her career. One is not knocking Ms Sen’s choice; it’s her life, but it certainly doesn’t qualify her as the best spokesperson around when we’re talking of professionalism.

Actually, nobody’s knocking Aishwarya’s right either to have a baby whenever she wants. Everybody is genuinely happy that everything is working out so well in her life. A great career, a super marriage, caring family members around her and now a baby on the way. But the only question that rankles is: when she knew she was pregnant, why didn’t she simply confide in her director or producers before she started Heroine? Or just give some excuse and not do the film? In fact, wasn’t announcing the film at Cannes her idea more than UTV’s? Feminists might rant — and air legal opinion in support — that it’s gender discrimination to sack a woman for getting pregnant. But this isn’t just a job; it’s a job that requires a certain amount of stress, travel and a great shape. So would it have hurt Aishwarya if she had been professional enough to share her condition with her producers before starting the film? After all, the Bachchans did secretly share the info with the IIFA awards people when they opted out of attending the show this year at Toronto. Why couldn’t the same courtesy be extended to the makers of Heroine? It’s an answer we’ll never get as strident feminists, Bachchan acolytes, lawyers and scribes, everybody who has nothing to do with it, has got into the act and raised the decibel levels.

Well, anyway, the Bachchans are in the news, and well-timed too, with the release of Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap. This week’s releases have much in common. If there’s the towering presence of Amitabh (with a refreshing whiff of Baghban in his heart-tugging chemistry with Hema Malini) in Bbuddah, there is the might of Aamir Khan behind Delhi Belly. Both films have been sensibly budgeted and showed table profits even before release. The Bachchans and the Khans were all over the place to market and promote the film, taking care not to take potshots at each other (unlike Farah Khan and Sanjay Leela Bhansali who took rivalry to new lows when Om Shanti Om and Saawariya clashed at the box office on the same day). And a new phenomenon was noticed: the Bhaag DK Bose bhaag number was heard more outside the film than in Delhi Belly. And where was Switty switty, the rap number picturised on Imran? Both numbers were more for promotional purposes than for the film itself.

Bbuddah was no different. Before release there was the much-hyped item number that went Main Chandigarh di star, munde checking me from far, munde slowing down the car that fetched Raveena Tandon a big heap of headlines. There were even stories of how the Mast mast girl trimmed down for its filming within hours. There was much recall over how the last time she did such a sensuous number with AB was way back in Aks. After all that hype, when Raveena was gone in a flash with no item number in the entire film, she texted the explanation: “I know a lot of people are disappointed. But it was a promotional song not to be used in the film.” It makes a great face-saving line when a song gets edited out.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor,The Film Street Journal