After reigning supreme over Bollywood for more than a decade, the Hindi film industry is ready to write off Madhuri Dixit. Every flop is cited as a proof of her falling popularity among the masses.

Unfortunately, for Madhuri, in the last two years she has seen more downs than ups. A string of flops has left her position shaky and extremely talented actresses like Kajol and Tabu have overtaken her in the popularity stakes. It's Madhuri's first taste of what an industry can do to you when you are down and out, when younger, nubile actresses -- who can also dance better -- start inching you out. It is a harsh reality that every film star down the ages has to live with. The fact that the Indian film industry -- which is so dependent on young and beautiful looking faces -- has no place for aging actors only makes it worse.

Madhuri wanted to become a microbiologist. An offer from Rajshri Productions, however, changed her life. Her first role in Abodh in 1986 brought her no recognition. In the same year, showman Subhash Ghai gave Madhuri a tiny dance sequence in Karma, which, unfortunately for her, was snipped off on the editing table. Ghai promised Madhuri meatier roles on the condition that she stops accepting bit parts in insignificant films. He kept his promise.

Madhuri starred in Ghai's Uttar Dakshin and then in his star-studded blockbuster Ram Lakhan. In order to promote his latest discovery, he put out an eight page advertisement in the trade magazines centering around Madhuri, which proclaimed that producers of the caliber of Boney Kapoor and Yash Chopra had signed Madhuri for their forthcoming projects. Of course, it was another matter that none of the aforementioned producers had never even heard of Madhuri.

Even before Ram Lakhan was under production, Madhuri bagged N Chandra's Tezaab. Her jhatkas in the Ek, do, teen number took the nation by storm. La Dixit had arrived, and it was only the first of a series of steamy cabarets that turned the bashful starlet into a mega-star.

In an era where towering icons like Amitabh Bachchan have crumbled into ordinariness, Madhuri's mystique has endured through the years, unsullied by the catfights, torrid affairs and venomous outbursts that mark an actress's progress from obscurity to stardom. Tezaab went on to complete its golden jubilee and Madhuri became the Ek Do Teen girl overnight.

A super-duper performance followed in Dil and Madhuri sashayed home with her first Filmfare award. She struck an enduring partnership with Indra Kumar that later resulted in two more blockbusters, Beta (1991) and Raja (1995).

From 1990 onwards, Madhuri delivered a hit every year -- Saajan, Khalnayak and Prem Pratigaya. But soon after a spate of flops, the industry grapevine had begun writing obituaries for Madhuri's 12-year career.

However, the kitschy Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (1994), Hindi cinema's biggest blockbuster to date, re-established Madhuri as Heroine No 1. Madhuri mania ensured the success of Raja (1995), a film with many flaws, earning Madhuri the enviable reputation of being one of the very few actresses who could carry a film on her shoulders.

However, soon her mega budgets films like Yaarana, Rajkumar, Prem Granth and Mahaanta were summarily rejected at the box office by the audience, which left Madhuri's star power unchallenged.

Her performance in Prem Granth (1996) and the gorgeous looks that she sported in Rajkumar (1996) were widely appreciated. But both were flops. Her jhatkas, which had dominated the box office for more than a decade, had begun to pale.

Prakash Jha's Mrityudand (1997) brought her critical acclaim if not box-office success, as did Nana Patekar's Prahaar where Madhuri, sans make-up, shocked more than entranced audiences. Mrityudand also won her the Screen Videocon Best Actress Award and established her as the 'thinking actress', a necessary feather in every self-respecting actress's cap.

After the not so hot Koyla (1997), director Rakesh Roshan said that Madhuri could no longer play the youthful type and continued to make unsavoury comments. Madhuri's response, however, was a dignified silence.

With a rumoured Rs 75 lakh to Rs 80 lakh price tag, Madhuri still remains one of Bollywood's most expensive actresses (her secretary denies this but the grapevine says she charged Rs 2 crore for her forthcoming film Engineer, her first Tamil film).

By the film industry's youth-obsessed standards, Madhuri has already moved into the "ageing star" category. Industry double standards allowed Vinod Khanna to work with a much younger Madhuri in Dayavaan in the late '80s, but came down heavily on her for working with a young Akshaye Khanna in Mohabbat. She is also accused of favouring films produced by her secretary Rikku Rakeshnath, even though all of Rikku's productions have failed at the box-office. Salacious gossip abounds about the duo's "unusually close" relationship.

Dil To Pagal Hai, a feel good romance released in 1998, saw Madhuri, raked in the mage bucks and also fetched her the Filmfare Best Actress award. A vindicated Madhuri dedicated her award to critics who had been politely hinting at retirement. "This," she said, holding up the statuette, "is popular opinion."

Madhuri's career strategy has evolved along with her talent. The actress, who once scrambled between studios working two shifts a day, now no longer works on Sundays and insists on only doing four films a year to keep dates free for promising projects that might suddenly materialise.

She is also, wisely, looking for roles that move beyond her much-exploited dancing prowess. In a recent interview she said as much, "I can't live without dancing, but I want to find a balance between the two (acting and dancing)."

Raj Kumar Santoshi's forthcoming film Pukar has her playing a woman who is neither completely good nor completely bad, but with a lot of shades of grey in her character. N Chandra cast her as a brave TV journalist in Wajood. In K C Bokadia's next film, Aap Mere Hain Sanam, she plays a housewife suspected of infidelity.

Prakash Jha, her director in Mrityudand, is scripting another Madhuri vehicle, as is Santoshi who says, "Madhuri has become a weakness after just one film together." She has also said that she is not averse to offers from filmmakers like Shyam Benegal.

1999 could well be Madhuri's golden year. For an actress who rarely treads the path of unconventional roles, this year has Madhuri playing a host of different characters in films including M F Husain's Gajagamini, which is slated for an October release.

Industry veterans suggest an image transformation, a gradual departure from the candy floss roles that have become her calling card. An actress on the wrong side of thirty, they say, cannot possibly sustain the lycra-clad, teenybopper roles, increasingly on offer. Contends Honey Irani, "Madhuri must move away from the college-girl variety of roles, not because she can't pull them off, but because it is time she took on different and challenging roles."