While titles like The Man of the Year and The Actor of the Year will be predictably conferred all over the place, one title you aren’t going to see anywhere will be The Bahu of the Year. It will be even more improbable to find it being handed to plastic queen Aishwarya Rai. But believe it or not, this comes, not from the Bachchan family, but from the dumped Salman Khan camp. If there is one thing Salim Khan and gang will admit off-the-record it is that out of all the girlfriends Salman brought home, Aishwarya Rai was the best bahu of them all. Suresh Oberoi would also probably nod in agreement, as Aishwarya Rai has a way of becoming a caring member of the family. The Khans of Bandstand still miss Ash’s extremely family-oriented nature.

That quality is evident when you see the Bachchans eating out of her hand. When she’s not being the celebrity in public, Aishwarya is the kind of reliable girl you’d like in the family. Last month, when Abhishek organised a special screening of Dhoom 2 for sis Shweta Nanda and her family in Delhi, the young man was supposed to have flown down as a special treat for all the kids watching the film (Abhishek is a great favourite with his niece Navya Naveli and nephew Agastya). Alas, Abhishek was held up at the shooting of the new Yash Raj-Pradeep Sarkar film and couldn’t make it to the screening. But the kids were far from disappointed as Aishwarya quickly filled in and flew down instead of Junior. Now that’s the kind of family spirit men like Amitabh approve of and Ash is terrific at giving quality attention to the people around her.

Last year, when Aishwarya was to make a brief appearance at a Sahara music awards in London, the organisers had cribbed that she had imperiously arrived late and had stayed for barely 15 minutes. But the truth was that the organisers had sent her only one car instead of the two that had been promised for the Rai entourage. And then the organisers had tried to do the usual last-minute push of hustling Ash into the first car to reach the venue while the rest could follow in the second car. But Aishwarya Rai was too seasoned a celebrity to fall for that one. Everybody knows that at any of these glamour-based events, you get looked after only if you are with a major star. Everybody else is treated like a second class citizen, and Ash was not going to zoom away leaving her parents and family to be pushed around. So, until the second car arrived and all of them could move as one unit, Ash waited. It was her hairstylist in London who told us this story as he had witnessed it all first-hand.

Until you are acquainted with this side of her personality, most would have the normal inane remarks to make of the Abhishek-Aishwarya marriage which is slated for February 2007. (Incidentally, around this time next year, it will probably bag The Marriage of the Year title in year-end write-ups.) But it is Ash’s way of giving top priority to the family that has worked with the Bachchans.

On this score, Jaya Bachchan is sure to have competition from her daughter-in-law. Sometime back, Jaya had told me that her late father-in-law always noticed and appreciated small gestures made by her. Jaya had narrated that once, before leaving for a major function, a large Bachchan clan had gathered and there was the usual last-minute irritation of who’ll-get-into-which-car. Jaya had quietly resolved it by telling the Bachchan parents to go ahead with “Amitji” and she and the others would follow them. At this Dr Harivanshrai Bachchan had put his hand on her head and quietly blessed her. Gestures like these may not have elicited a comment from her husband Amitabh Bachchan but he sure noticed them too.

For Amitabh Bachchan, apart from keeping the family together, it is imperative that the women also carry themselves with great dignity in public. Jaya has never failed him on this count. And you know you can trust Aishwarya Rai, who is a complete celebrity, to keep up with the Bachchans every step of the way.

Oh, and those who were around when Amitabh and Jaya got married would remember that right until the last day, the tall lanky actor had never acknowledged his Zanjeer co-star as anything but a good friend. Jaya had always been a little more honest about her relationship with “lambuji” as she called him (she switched to “Amitji” after Shweta was born, alarmed that her daughter would also grow up calling her dad “lambuji”).

Thirty-three years later, Abhishek is as reticent as his dad was about giving his relationship with Aishwarya a more intimate name than friendship. As for Ash, she has begun calling him “My man”.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International