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His body, his looks, his talent have made the actor a sudden national craze. In a Bollywood dominated by the Khans, his could be the face that will launch many a hit.

By Madhu jain 

The man's a hazard. Soon, you'll have to slap an injurious-to-your-health warning on the 26-year-old actor who has the female half of the nation in a swoon. Just the other day, Hrithik Roshan whose debut film Kaho Naa ... Pyaar Hai has hit box-office gold and made him a household name overnight, was standing in front of his Juhu home, chatting with a friend, when two young women drove by. The car went ahead a few feet, screeched to a halt and reversed. "Oh my God, is that Hrithik?" one of them screamed. The homegrown Greek god with green eyes and bulging biceps smiled and waved Hi. The girl at the wheel shrieked, pressed down the accelerator instead of the brake, sending the car into a tree.

They recovered. The tree's okay.
But the country isn't. There's something about Hrithik. Something which makes perfectly sane people go berserk. Toddlers want to dance like him, young kids put his photograph under their pillows so that they may dream of him. Young men want to be like him. Young girls just want him. And their mothers have very, well, unmaternal thoughts about the actor. Like Ritu Chadha, a 38-year-old Delhi-based exporter who went to see KNPH with her teenaged children: "I was absolutely hysterical when I was watching the film," she says unblinkingly. "They had to keep me down because I was getting so excited." Or the 45-year-old woman in Mumbai who has seen the film 10 times and has still not had enough of him. "I just go to see Hrithik Roshan. To me he looks like Jesus Christ. I react to him."

Why is everybody drooling over this young man all of a sudden? Six months ago hardly anybody had heard of him. Mention his name today and a light comes on in most female eyes. During the Provogue fashion show earlier this month in Delhi ramp hunks like Milind Soman and John Abraham were reduced to wilting wallflowers while over 150 women of varied ages waited until 2.00 a.m. to get Hrithik's autograph. Ditto the recent Gladrags show in Mumbai: all eyes were only for India's new sex symbol.

Certainly, the film's an unconditional hit: eight weeks and it's still going full house in theatres in Mumbai and Delhi -- and to packed houses in the rest of the country. In Lucknow young men leap to their feet and throw coins at the screen in Shubham theatre when Hrithik does his dance number and young women start gyrating in the aisles. At Mumbai's Eros Cinema, orgiastic shrieks and cries greet his sinuous and incredibly sexy dance to Lucky Ali's song for which he wears a see-through figure hugging black top.

In conservative Chennai the girls are going ga-ga over him and the maamis are gung-ho about accompanying them. Collegian Rani Shiva, 19, says her heart goes "dhak-dhak-Hrithik-Hrithik" each time she watches him on TV promos for KNPH, which incidentally, he's done himself. And in cultured Calcutta the teeny-boppers are faintly cannibalistic about the young actor. Anu, 19, likes everything about him: "I like his biceps, I like the way his lower body moves. I like his hands, his long fingers. I'm sure they feel good. He's a little effeminate but never mind. Overall he's hot." Sheena, 16, lets out a shriek when you mention HR's name. Then spends the next 10 gushing about him: "He's shy and inhibited -- a wonderful change from the shorty Khans. He looks good enough to eat!! But there's also something vulnerable about him that makes you feel protective." The type you can take home to your mother. But they should be warned: mama may fancy him too.

All this is something which has not happened for a long time the trade pundits tell you. Tarun Adarsh, editor, Trade Guide, says the film has done better than Yash Chopra's blockbuster Dil To Pagal Hai and is poised to earn between Rs 50 and Rs 60 crore, Rs 10 crore in Mumbai alone. The industry grapevine has it that Hrithik is now being offered the moon -- in real terms a crore and a half rupees for a film. But the cautious actor's settling for a little under a crore. Even his posters are flying off the shelves. Sriniwas Sadani, 29, proprietor of the Hallmark store on Calcutta's Elgin Road is baffled by the growing demand. "No one, no cricketer, filmstar or pop musician has sold so many posters," he says, adding, "People have forgotten Shah Rukh Khan." Even diehard fans like 11-year-old Maya Sethna, the little scene-stealer in Deepa Mehta's film Earth: "Hrithik's cool, I really like him. I used to like Shah Rukh Khan."

But it's more than just the unexpected success of the film which Hrithik's father, director Rakesh Roshan, has so carefully crafted to launch his son. It's the actor's universal appeal which obviously cuts across all ages and regions. And gender. Says novelist and society watcher Shobha De: "Men admire him and women adore him. It is a very unique slot for Hrithik to be in -- with both the sexes rooting for him."
With the arrival of the new popcorn Adonis suddenly every other hero looks a little more tired, a little more jaded. Ironically, the boy next door -- a third generation filmwala whom nobody really noticed -- has become the screen messiah people were eagerly awaiting for. "This is the first time that you have a total actor, not a media-created star," says director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, adding, "Most actors are non-actors, they are stylised and their mannerisms become popular." Chopra who's directing him in Mission Kashmir had actually cast Hrithik long before KNPH was released. And interestingly for the fairly complex role of a militant.

But other directors are snapping him up: Subhash Ghai for his forthcoming Yaadein, Karan Johar for Kabhi Khushi, Kabhi Gham. Hrithik is also acting in films by Mahesh Bhatt and nephew Vikram Bhatt and Filmfare Editor Khalid Mohammad for Fiza -- with Hrithik once again playing a terrorist.
Debuting star sons often end up as one-film wonders, like Kumar Gaurav, Feroz Khan's son Fardeen Khan, Raaj Kumar's son Puru. But it looks like Hrithik -- called Duggu by family members -- is here to stay. Second films are the real test but people are impressed by the versatility of the young actor. Shekhar Kapur who first spotted him believes that the man can be quite a boon to the industry. Explains Kapur who took Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber to see KNPH last week: "I think the directors here should be very happy, for there's finally a star who thinks like an actor. In a dramatic actor there are masses of subtext. For example, behind one line of Amitabh Bachchan is a huge history, and you get the feeling that behind Hrithik as well there's a huge history."

There is, off screen too. Hrithik's no himbo -- a male version of a dumb blonde. He graduated from Sydenham College in Mumbai with a first class and got a scholarship to UCLA to study computer graphics. However, what he really wanted to do was act; as a child he would secretly imitate his father in front of the mirror. But nobody asked him, not even papa who had suffered many setbacks in his acting career. The next best choice was to assist his father and he did that for five years, beginning with the film Khel and ending with Koyla. But when his father eventually did, after a screenplay with Shah Rukh Khan did not work out, Hrithik set about grooming himself into an actor: Says Papa Roshan: "He forgot the world the day I told him that I was making a film with him."

It was an all out war to package himself into a star. "I am a product of packaging," he says rather disarmingly, adding, "I have a habit of attacking all my fears one step at a time." No wonder Sylvester Stallone is his hero: "He inspired me, not for being Rambo or Rocky but for the hard work it took to get there, despite his handicaps." Hrithik had his own handicaps: a thin frame and a double thumb. "I was all wrong: my legs are too thin, my torso is too short, I have big ears which keep popping out, hair which never settles and a thin neck and a long nose"

Nor did he like his diction, so he stared singing classes. "My throw of voice was not good." Then came the turn of the body. "I was too thin, and pumping iron by myself didn't help." The next stop was at Salman Khan's house. "I told him that I wanted a body ... and he just took me in." The workouts and the protein shakes diet finally gave him the torso which makes women go crazy today. It soon became a 26-hour day: with dancing classes. At one stage he had three tutors coming home each day, one to teach him Hindi, another Urdu, and the third elocution.

But the most important lesson he seems to have taught himself is bit of humility. He deflects all compliments (points to his ears) and still blushes when fans try to feel his biceps and come on strong about how sexy he is. "My ears go red, I can't help it." But star vanity hasn't been locked out completely. He didn't let us shoot any photographs because he had been unwell, hadn't pumped iron for a few days and the biceps would have looked a bit droopy in the photographs.
Life for him at the moment is one big blur: the fame's been too instant, he explains.

"I thought I would just get passing marks. But what I got was much more and it's growing and scaring me. One fine day I get out of bed, go out and the traffic stops. It's hard to digest." Those girls in the car were not the only ones. Earlier this month he had to be whisked out of the kitchen from the Taj Hotel in Mumbai when a huge crowd found out he was dining at the Shamiana.
He was mobbed again at the Centaur where he had gone because Govinda's daughter insisted that he cut her birthday cake. Govinda says that he now knows what a star is.

-with Natasha Israni, Labonita Ghosh,
Methil Renuka and Anna M.M. Vetticad 

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