It has been the year when filmland girls have learnt to dump their boyfriends without compunction. And there’s a feeling that Aishwarya Rai’s fairytale life has something to do with it.

Once upon a time, whenever a girl got involved with a famous name, the question asked was, will he marry her? For example, it was always, will Rishi Kapoor marry Neetu Singh? Never the other way round. But some of Hindi cinema’s strong women have proved that the right of choice rests with them too.

Ash may have never opened her heart out to the media but she was pretty open about her romances. When she was with Salman Khan, she didn’t play coy with any of her colleagues, the whole world was privy to their tempestuous and passionate love story. When she finally dumped him, she wrote a letter to the press detailing how abusive the relationship had been. So, after five years of everybody speculating whether or not Salman Khan will give up his bachelor status for Ash, it was she who made the decision and came up with a resounding ‘no’.

Gone are the days when a girl stuck by a man and yearned for marriage because there was the fear of being tainted, the fear that nobody else, nobody respectable, would marry her. Recently, Ash bust that myth when, after Salman, she moved on to Vivek Oberoi. And when she tired of him, she got the most eligible bachelor in town as her doting husband.

If Ash can do it and walk away with a prize catch, so can Kareena, Lara, even Kim Sharma. Without a doubt it was Kareena who dumped a baffled Shahid Kapur when she’d had enough of mothering him. And she walks with a new confidence with her latest man, Saif Ali Khan. In fact, Kareena and Saif step out so stylishly together that they look like an international couple. The same confidence is spotted in Lara Dutta who put an end to a seven-year live-in relationship with Kelly Dorje and is none the worse for it. Starlet Kim Sharma too isn’t shedding tears over splitting with Yuvraj Singh — it was her decision to move away.

Thank you, Ash. Your success story with a Prince Charming waiting in the last chapter has been truly inspirational.

Of course, long before Ash there was one Dev Anand discovery, a young, sprightly beauty queen. She was openly dating Sanjay Dutt when she began her acting career but after years of patiently waiting for him to give up a serious drug addiction, she left him and moved on. The very spunky actress moved in with Rajesh Khanna, her costar in a couple of films. This was way back in the 80s when living-in still raised an eyebrow or two. I distinctly remember her birthday party, a surprise one hosted by Rajesh Khanna in the bungalow they shared. The actress was talking to another heroine of those days called Padmini Kapila. Padmini had been film-maker Prakash Mehra’s special woman for years but the much-married man was on the verge of going back to wife and kids. Those were the days when married men (Raj Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar etc) fooled around outside but invariably went back home at the end of it all. Divorces à la Saif and Aamir Khan were practically unheard of. So, it was pretty common to hear the line, ‘Will Prakash Mehra marry Padmini Kapila?’ A question that kept Padmini on tenterhooks but angered Rajesh Khanna’s live-in partner, the young Dev Anand discovery. She fumed, “Why is it always asked if the man will marry the woman? Why is it always, will Rajesh Khanna marry me? Don’t I have a choice in this?”

The spunky young actress didn’t just speak confidently — two months after the surprise birthday party hosted by boyfriend Rajesh Khanna, she walked out on him. And married the most eligible industrialist in the country!

After it was announced that Bipasha Basu (who had gone under the knife for you-know-what enhancement) had bagged this year’s title of the sexiest woman in Asia, a co-star from one of her new releases asked pertinently, shouldn’t the award go to the best plastic surgeon of the year?

Does Deepika Padukone in Om Shanti Om sound suspiciously like Bipasha did in Raaz and other earlier films? There’s a whisper that the voice you heard was not Deepika’s own but that of Mona, a professional dubbing artiste who has been the voice of Bipasha in the past. Mmm, makes you wonder if the small-structured Deepika will be following in Bipasha’s footsteps in any other way!

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International