Supermodel, dancer, veejay, emcee. Malaika Arora Khan imbues each of her avatars with a dash of drama, a shot of sensuality. And remains always cool. Always hot.

Malaika Arora is many things – voluptuous vixen, cajoling wife and mollycoddling mom. All her roles she takes rather seriously, consistently adding to each of her avatars, a fine dose of hi-glam sultriness. While each year churns out restless moms bemoaning the loss of pre-natal tautness and woefully surrendering to the laws of gravity, Malaika’s curves get curvier and her gait, slinkier than a night of sin. So what makes her strut her stuff with so much elan? She was the IT girl yesterday, she remains so today, and going by the sway of her hips, she’s going to reign supreme for time to come.

Malaika’s secret lies in her unapologetic love of her own beauty and her own body. Ask any photographer and he will tell you that she shares a tantalising relationship with the lens. Whether it’s her pomp or her petulance, she gives it all, unabashedly to the camera. Add to that her penchant for second skin clothing, accessorised by her perennial tan (and perhaps the best bronzer in the world), she makes our perceptibly grown up men quiver in pubescent boyishness.

While we are inundated with women who have either preserved or processed sexuality to the point of being as banal as canned food, Malaika has mastered a great paradox that makes her a fine survivor in this world of instant fame and equally instant obscurity: she gives with one hand, that which she takes from the other. She gives her sensuality with the same self-assurance that she withholds it. She seems supremely confident of what she projects, and how much of herself she surrenders to the public. She makes it amply clear about one thing – she is the mistress of her own image. She does not overkill. She simply trickles her persona, in a manner that keeps the audience clamouring for more. While her sense of style is personal, her acknowledgement of her physical allure is public. And, the next time you see her peering at you from a hoarding atop a building, you may flatter her with your gaze, but don’t doubt for a second – she’s the one controlling it.

In a trigger-happy, bling-bling frenzied era that believes ‘reinvention’ is the mantra to celebrity longevity, Malaika is consistent with her image. She’s not the lollypop wielding Lolita one day and the epitome of marital subjugation the other. She is not entirely Bollywood, nor is she a tear-jerking TV queen.

She is our numero uno ‘item’ girl. She is pure pleasure. And, whichever way you turn her, she will give it to you unadulterated.