“Right now it isn’t time for me to do too many of these offbeat films. I did Chameli, and that’s enough,” she said with a toss of her stubborn head.

I immediately recalled her response to Deepa Mehta’s Water when it came to her right after Refugee. She was shooting for Subhash Ghai’s Yaadein in Rajasthan when the script arrived. “I can’t do this,” she mock-quivered. “Shabana Azmi would chew me alive.”

Of course she wasn’t bothered by Shabana’s performance. From the start Kareena is the most confident and arrogant performer in Bollywood. Even for the most complicated scene she needs no rehearsal. Joking and giggling till the last second she switches on her instinctive powerhouse performing abilities like a water-tap.

And so it flows. Kareena is today on the threshold of another beginning. Right now Kareena is a girl completely consumed by love. Her other friends and well-wishers (yours truly included) have ceased to matter.

Her moodiness is legendary. But she never carries her temper to the sets. Kareena is a performer much ahead of her times. She’s a princess in demeanor and royalty at heart. Her bearing and her behavior convey the arrogance of aristocracy. It was these qualities that prompted Sanjay Leela Bhansali to cast her as the passionate warrior-courtesan Mastani in the historical love story Bajirao Mastani.

I am not very sure any longer if the film can be made with Kareena in the cast. With characteristic impetuosity she has gone and signed two other films with her Bajirao co-star Salman Khan.

The larger picture has never mattered to her. She always jumps into the short run sacrifices the trek for the sprint.

I remember how excited she was after watching Bhansali’s Devdas. “I HAVE to be in his next picture, no matter what. We were born to work together,” she vowed.

I’ve seen Kareena in love. Nothing else matters to her right now. When Agent Vinod didn’t work she was heartbroken, not for herself but her beloved Saif Ali Khan.

Right now she’s consumed by the thought of marriage and the release of Heroine, in that order. One of these has to work. The other would be a bonus.