Beauty From Another Border

09 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Features & Trends, Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Interviews: Cover Stories, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Katrina Kaif, Trend, Verve Magazine

Published: November 2013, Cover Story, Verve Magazine

Indian cinema has become a multi-ethnic turf with the foray of Eurasian or non-Indian fair-skinned brunettes. The film industry continues to open its arms to a posse of beautiful foreigners, which may be a sign of globalisation or reverse exoticism….

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“I have never believed that I’m better at my work, more famous or more beautiful than my Indian colleagues, even if I look different.” Yana Synkova Gupta, Czech model and item number girl, formerly married to an Indian, once said to Verve. The Indian film industry continues to be a leveller, an industry of opportunities – allowing for the foray of international faces into its desi waters. Far before the country opened up its economic arms to globalisation, women from abroad found themselves trying to woo the Indian audience, with varying results.

Possibly the first grand entry into India cinema of a foreigner was that of ‘Fearless Nadia’, born Mary Ann Evans in Australia, but brought up in India. With her theatre and circus background she carved a unique spot for herself after being introduced to Hindi films by Jamshed Wadia of Wadia Movietone in 1935. The tall blue-eyed blonde ‘Hunterwali’, held her own in Indian cinema for over three decades. Raj Kapoor brought a Russian circus down in Mera Naam Joker (1972) and Kseniya Ryabinkina, the fair maiden therein who won his heart on screen, was one of the early entrants to Indian cinema, albeit in a blink-and-miss role. While women from the subcontinent have found presence for a long time, hardly any actress made a major impact, until two Nepalese girls who studied in India (though separated by decades) came to the fore: Mala Sinha and Manisha Koirala. It may have helped that they could easily be mistaken for local artistes (much like the Sri Lankan Jacqueline Fernandez today). And who can forget how Burmese actress and dancer, Helen Richardson, set the screen on fire with her sensational moves? With over 500 films to her name, she is the one who created a unique space for special dance or ‘item’ numbers in popular Indian cinema.

Today, the roster of international faces hails from all over the world including remote Eastern European countries to the big Western ones. In Thomas Friedman’s ‘flat’ world, you find markets becoming interchangeable: Hollywood is realising that India is a huge audience for their films while Indian cinema is growing all over the world because of the number of Indians living abroad. Globalisation and the exposure of Indians at home to foreign cinema and television over the last couple of decades have provided access to visual material featuring people of different races – making it more acceptable to be admiring of or drawn to them.

WHY INDIA?
India’s thriving film industries are a big market for aspiring actresses. International, non-Indian models already here, like Yana Gupta or Giselli Monteiro, are looking for opportunities to break into the small or big screen – in the way Saif Ali Khan’s former-love interest, the Italian Rosa Catalano, once attempted. Those who are ‘discovered’ from abroad, like Rockstar’s Nargis Fakhri and Madras Town’s Amy Jackson are willing to take a chance to become popular in a foreign country. Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa runner-up, the American Lauren Gottlieb, who is a natural brunette, says most people wonder whether she has any Indian roots. Add dark hair and good looks to the Indian desire for fair skin, and you’ve got a Katrina-Kaifesque winning combination. It is harder to stand out in one’s own country than it is to gain exotic recognition abroad.

Hindi cinema director, Imtiaz Ali, who has cast foreign faces in two of his movies, believes that signing an actress from abroad can be more economical than hiring an established actress from India. “What you would pay a foreigner would be the same as a new person in India, with the added advantage of a fresh face. The only difference being, if you have specially invited the person here for an acting role, you would be responsible for providing them their life here – the travel, the lifestyle.”

So you have Eurasians, women with Indian roots or origin, eager to give it a shot, even if they, like the Indo-German Evelyn Sharma, have been discovering their roots for the first time (and for the longest time believed that biryani was a German dish).

SPEECHLESS NO DOUBT
Unlike Kalki Koechlin (born and brought up in India to French parents), most actresses of foreign origin struggle with the language issue. Hindi – or any Indian language – isn’t easy to learn. It isn’t remotely like any other foreign language and tends to form a natural barrier to success in Indian cinema. Brazilian model, Giselli Monteiro, played the role of an Indian in Imtiaz Ali’s Love Aaj Kal (2009) because she had no major speaking role. Ali points out: “Speech makes a huge difference; while feelings are much the same way in any part of the world. Punjabis felt that Monteiro really looked like a local girl.” The success of this casting probably led Ali to offer Pakistani-Czech model Nargis Fakhri a chance to play the lead role in his next venture, Rockstar (2011). A complete unfamiliarity with the language and culture led to Fakhri floundering in the lead role and facing a lot of flak. In the recent Madras Café though, she moves forward to play an English-speaking Indian girl from London, therefore with an admissible accent. Lisa Ray, born in Canada to an Indian father and Polish mother, had her stint in Hindi and South film industries, but her inability to speak Hindi possibly deterred her from moving further, leading her to English-speaking cinema, including working with director, Deepa Mehta (Water).

Except for South Indian cinema where dubbing is more acceptable – British model, Amy Jackson, regularly has her lines dubbed – it is likely that language will continue to play a major hindrance until Indian films are made in English. As Koechlin points out, “It is fine in the beginning, a beautiful face and then somebody else’s voice; but it becomes tough to relate to the celebrity who doesn’t speak your language and that’s when they lose contact with the audience.” Born in small-town Germany to a German mother and Indian father, Evelyn Sharma, who didn’t know a word of Hindi when she came to India, underwent exhaustive Hindi training to know it well enough by the time she started her first movie, From Sydney With Love (2012).

And what about body language? In an inherently visual medium like acting, the body language plays an important role in conveying the character’s emotions. Imtiaz Ali admits that the criticism he received on casting Fakhri – while he still stands by his casting decision – is that her body language was innately Western. “She wasn’t Hindustani. The way her mouth shaped and moved when speaking the local language was innately alien and disconcerting. When she was talking in English it was fine, but the rest of the time, the cultural heritage was missing. So in general, a foreigner can’t be as believable when speaking in a foreign language. Janta can’t accept ki yeh hamari ladki hai.”

AH, KATRINA
A British model who spoke not a single word of Hindi and couldn’t dance at all now reigns supreme in the Indian film industry. Born Katrina Turquotte, the arresting girl began her modelling career in Hawaii at the age of 14 and made her debut in Kaizad Gustad’s box-office dud, Boom in 2003. (Incidentally, a year after, Kaizad Gustad faced jail time for the accidental death of British-Pakistani crew member Nadia Khan, on the sets of his film Bombay Central).

Working in South Indian films and in Hindi cinema, Kaif clawed her way up the movie reels through sheer grit, determination and – if such a thing exists – luck. And yet, while she has turned detractors into admirers, is considered a bankable star, has made it to Power lists (including Verve’s 2013 power cover) and has heavy endorsements; industry insiders (like director, Imtiaz Ali) doubt that she can hold her own against an Indian Kareena Kapoor Khan when it comes to the quality of roles offered, because Khan is a local girl who gets all the local nuances.

There has been speculation of Kaif’s origins – despite being a gorgeous brunette, there are talks that the Kashmiri link doesn’t actually exist, it’s just a clever marketing ploy to not alienate the Indian audience and create a foundation of acceptance. Which may be why there is a surge of Eurasians attempting to try their luck in Indian cinema. Even Ali admits that Fakhri’s Pakistani lineage played a significant part in casting her as the lead in his movie, Rockstar (2011).

With support from her then boyfriend and industry stalwart, Salman Khan, and a fierce desire to succeed by observing her co-stars, Khan and Akshay Kumar, Kaif has the learnt the ropes and knows how not to drop the ball. She has a fierce regime – exercises brutally, never stops her dance practice, has managed to master Hindi far better than Sonia Gandhi in a far shorter time and is her own best PR manager. So is Kaif an anomaly or an inspiration? She is both. There possibly will be many years before another Katrina Turquotte may become the Indian superstar Katrina Kaif, but she will serve as inspiration to many aspirants until that happens.

REALITY-SHOW DIVAS
Foreigners undoubtedly add the great masala element and exotic appeal to reality television and hope to have it kick-start their celluloid career – in much the manner that Shilpa Shetty managed to work the British Celebrity Big Brother 5 television show in her favour. While Indo-Canadian adult film star, Sunny Leone’s racy presence in the Bigg Boss house led to her being cast in Hindi films, Yana Gupta became a household name after Fear Factor – Khatron Ke Khiladi (2008) and Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa – 4 (2010) despite being introduced way back in 2003 with the Babuji song in Dum.

But the greatest success story in recent times is possibly that of professional dancer and choreographer, Lauren Gottlieb, a finalist in Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 6. The hit American reality show, So You Think You Can Dance (2005) star and Hollywood actress got a break in Bollywood with UTV Motion Pictures emailing her to play the lead in Remo D’Souza’s 3-D dance film, Any Body Can Dance (2013). She hasn’t had a moment to look back since.

BEST FRIEND, VAMP OR ITEM GIRL
Jerry Pinto’s Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb examined the unequivocal charisma that the Burmese dancing sensation brought to the fore. ‘Helen was the desire that you need not be embarrassed about feeling…because there was something about her that transcended the tawdry clothes, the bizarre make-up, the invasive camera angles, the inane lyrics and the repetitive choreography and suggestive movements.’

Today, the foreign girls that are a part of Indian cinema often get relegated to risqué roles, or the best friend, or the vamp with one sensational item number. In the recent Prakash Jha film, Satyagraha, Eastern European model, Natasa Stankovic, is introduced in a dull number and an equally dull performance. A choli, a bare midriff and gyrations do not a successful item girl make. Actresses like the Arab-Brazilian Bruna Abdullah have been relegated to smaller roles – the hero’s fling in I Hate Luv Storys (2010) and item numbers like the popular Subah Hone Na De from Desi Boyz (2011); while the Mumbai-born, foreign-raised Indo-Australian Lisa Haydon got recognition as a model and is now finding small roles in movies like Aisha (2010), where she plays a New-York return to explain away the accent.

Through popular demand, Sunny Leone gyrated to Laila, an item number in this year’s Shootout at Wadala. Even the Sri Lankan beauty queen, Jacqueline Fernandez, does a choli-and-ghaghra number with Jadoo Ki Jhappi in Ramaiya Vastavaiya, in an attempt to woo over the local audiences. Is an item number a foolproof method of instant recognition, or does it relegate them to sleazy status? It’s a fine line between maryada and besharmi that very few manage to get the better of.

GOING BIG TIME OR STAYING SMALL
Are these women being relegated to item girls because they have a particular kind of body and are more likely to wear skimpier clothes? Does it appear that they would more easily be cast as the lead actress’ best friend or the girl the hero has a casual fling with, because our version of Western morality being such, Indians are likely to be more convinced that the foreigner is of easy virtue? Indian actresses aspiring to become leads may also be less willing to ruffle the feathers of the audience’s ethics – they would like to be thought of as pavitra; leaving a greater opening for foreigners to capitalise on to become the audience’s fantasy.

Evelyn Sharma initially wondered whether people would accept her in Indian cinema – “Even though I had signed five different movies I was worried people might slot me into the ‘foreign girl’ role.” Even Koechlin admits that she had to refuse a lot of film offers that had come her way because they were the background dancer or the vampy extra white girl. It was only after proving her acting prowess in edgy and risqué roles in movies like Dev D (2009) and That Girl In Yellow Boots (2010) that Koechlin began to play strong character roles in mainstream Indian cinema like those in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) and Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani (2013). In a move that suggests that she is the only actress to successfully shuttle between playing Indian, semi-Indian and foreign roles, she is soon to essay the role of Victoria Ocampo, Rabindranath Tagore’s Argentine writer muse, on stage in Manav Kaul’s Colour Blind, speaking in five languages.

CAN ANYONE MAKE IT HERE?
Whether you face judgements from the audience or you have to work doubly hard to prove your mettle, it isn’t as simple as talent reaching great heights. Lauren Gottlieb, who probably has had to counter more challenges than others, says, “I don’t think anyone can make it anywhere. You have to view everyone individually. You have to have the guts, determination. It’s one thing to be a good-looking face and try to make it but when you have dedicated your life or career to something and studied for it, that’s when you rise. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world; I was rising in Hollywood – I didn’t know I would rise over here! You have to be fearless. I’ve been challenged with rapidly adapting culturally, language-wise, dance-style-wise…. It’s scary sometimes, but if you tackle it, you can succeed.”

Geographical barriers are one thing. Culture and language is another. The former is pretty much redundant; the latter can be circumvented. In a country that is exorbitantly heterogeneous with an inherent love for things foreign, there can only be more opportunities for the ones that strive to make it here. Maybe all that’s required is what Raj Kapoor popularised in Shree 420:

‘Mera Joota Hai Japani,
Yeh Patloon Englistani,
Sar Pe Laal Topi Rusi,
Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’.

SHORT-TERM IMPORTS
A brief moment in Indian cinema

1. While Uruguayan-Mexican model and actress, Barbara Mori set the screen on fire in Kites (2010), there was no room to have her back because she was introduced as a foreigner.

2. British roses Rachel Shelley (Lagaan) and Antonia Bernath (Kisna) only served to play a specific foreign part in their respective films.

3. British models Aruna Shields (Prince) and Sofia Hayat (Diary of a Butterfly), South African model and Playboy cover girl Candice Boucher (Aazaan) debuted in Bollywood but have yet to make their presence felt.

4. The Norwegian-born, Iranian actress Nigar Khan known for the Chadti Jawaani video and the Australian actress Tania Zaetta (Bunty aur Babli and Salaam Namaste) haven’t had any takers so far.

5. The British model with an Indo-Mauritian mother, Hazel Keech, who acted in Bodyguard (2011) and Tamil film Billa (2007), popped into Bigg Boss 7 last month; but beat an early retreat.

AMY’S WAY
Verve cover girl, British model, Amy Jackson on becoming a desi heroine

“It is unbelievable that I was asked to play top lead roles in films where my lines have to be dubbed!”

She’s petite for a British girl, has stunning eyes and a persistent sniffle at the cover shoot in Kashmir. When she turned 21, she felt she was growing old – and yet, she’s just embarking on a journey in Indian cinema.

The fresh-faced Amy Jackson got noticed in Hindi cinema for her role in Ekk Deewana Tha (2012), where she played a Christian girl opposite Prateik. While the movie didn’t make waves, it served to bring Jackson, a British model, to the attention of the local audience. The 22-year-old equestrian was discovered by model scouts at the age of 15, soon after which she became a Miss Teen World (2008) and Miss Liverpool (2010), seeing her modelling career track across UK and Europe.

South-Indian-cinema director, Vijay (who thought she resembled Kate Winslet in Titanic), spotted one of her pageant images on the Internet and traced her to London. She was auditioned for the Tamil film, Madras Town/ Madrasapattinam (2010), in which she played a British girl. The movie was a super hit. It led to another film, Thaandavam and Jackson is now doing Telugu films, Yevadu (due to release soon) and Shankar’s Ai. “Ever since I got the taste of acting as the leading lady, I’ve never looked back,” she says.

Jackson travels all over for her shoots but has set up home in Bandra, Mumbai. She has made friends from the fashion industry and regards the South directors as her mentors. “When I first arrived I’d just turned 17…I missed my family and friends. I’m very lucky to have a supportive family: my mum travels everywhere with me, my dad has flown over to watch me shoot. For my first ever movie, my friends organised a premiere in my hometown, Liverpool, and that was the first time they ever watched an Indian movie…they loved it!”

She finds scripts from the South to be more exciting as they offer lead and meatier roles. “While they are beautiful actresses and great dancers, I wouldn’t like to be known as merely an item girl. Maybe after I have established myself as an actor I would consider it.” The young girl who turned vegetarian overnight enjoys a dash of Indian food – minus the spice. “On a Sunday I like to chill out and watch movies all afternoon. My Indian favourites include Jab We Met, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Ghajini.” While she offers that she is currently single, she laughs, “Male attention is the same world over.”

India has been “life-changing” for Jackson. “India excites me. There’s no place like it in the world, and my favourite part about it, is the people. The energy; the fact that Mumbai is constantly alive and buzzing. Even if it’s 3 a.m., I know that when I look out of the window I’ll never feel alone. It’s exhilarating! It’s such a welcoming place; I love calling it my home. When I am away, I also miss the sun…after all, we don’t get much of it in England!”

“I don’t see how an actress’ race or origin determines getting ‘propositioned’. I believe that things like that happen based on your character and how you portray yourself.”
– Amy Jackson, model and actress

Through The Lens Deeply

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Published: Verve Magazine, Feature, Verve Duo, September 2013
Photograph by Tina Dehal

He is the director of the award-winning Udaan and the lyrical Lootera. She is the Bollywood still photographer who captures candid frames with alacrity. Vikramaditya and Ishika Motwane indulge in light-hearted chatter on life and love

Before you see her, you can hear the peals of laughter. There is hardly a moment when Ishika Mohan Motwane isn’t smiling or giggling and 37-year-old Vikramaditya Motwane is still helplessly smitten. There are easy kisses, looks and caresses between them, none of which require prompting. Verve photographer for the day, Tina Dehal, is a childhood buddy of the Motwanes and it’s not long before we are regaled with stories about how Vikram had a huge crush on Ishika in school; Ishika claimed it was for her cheese sandwiches and how she balked when he wrote her a love letter that she read on the basketball court. Maybe it had something to do with her being a pilot’s daughter, and him being obsessed with aeroplanes. The courtship lasted awhile, there were looks exchanged through classroom windows…all on the hallowed grounds of Jamnabhai Narsee School, Juhu. And they have been together ever since, married for the last eight years.

“WE DRIFTED APART WHEN WE WERE AROUND 21. I was working on my first film, assisting Sanjay Leela Bhansali on Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999),” says Vikram. Ishika pipes in, “The long hours, barely seeing him – I was still in college, happy-go-lucky – we drifted apart in personalities as well.” In that one year, Vikram partied hard while Ishika took up a course in photography in Los Angeles (USA). She imagined combining her love for animals into a life at National Geographic. When they met again after a year, they knew they wanted to be together forever. It was like coming home to someone familiar, yet discovering someone new. Convincing her family that “the bad boy, who smokes and drinks”, had sobered was another battle. “I wasn’t very appreciated in her house. Until I gave her a ring I was banned.”

IT WAS SANJAY LEELA BHANSALI WHO GAVE THEM BOTH THEIR FIRST BREAK. Aware of their love story – Ishika once called up Bhansali while he was shooting for Hum Dil… in Budapest to say bye to Vikram before she left for LA – he was rue to keep them apart. Discovering her talent in still photography, he brought her on the set of Devdas (2002) and she has now got a solid repertoire of 12 films, leaving her whimsical dream of swimming with whales and dolphins far behind. On working with her on both his films, Vikram says, “She’s not my actor or cinematographer or a crew member that I may end up clashing with at some point of time. Our jobs are parallel. There is never a situation where I think she’s done something that I didn’t like. We don’t take work home, and even if I am short with her, she’s quick to forget or she just laughs.”

“I POKE MY NOSE IN EVERYTHING!” Vikram smiles indulgently at Ishika’s unabashed statement; the crew members on set are quite accustomed to it. “But there is a lot of absorption she does for me. If I mumble something, she hears it and she takes care of it. In Udaan (2010), we didn’t have a big team to manage continuity, so if I wondered what was wrong with the character’s hair, suddenly she would just fix it for me. It’s like having an extra AD on set – she knows what I want and she’ll make sure it’s done. Also, she tells me exactly what she feels – she is my biggest critic, like my mom. I may not like it, but it’s something you need.”

AND YET, SHE IS NON-INTRUSIVE, unlike the old-school still photographers. “She stealthily moves up to where I am sitting, waits for me to go ‘Khhh’ for ‘Cut’ and at that moment, her camera rapidly goes click-click-click-click. Or before ‘Action’. Sometimes she shoots in between the shot. There’s never a big production about it, she’s taken a photo without us even knowing it.” Ishika marks ruefully that most people don’t realise the importance of a still until much later – when they are using it in marketing or during distribution. “For Slumdog Millionaire (2008), when they were doing a brochure and sending it out to Cannes, it was sweet, I got a little note saying, ‘You helped sell our film.’”

“HE’S EXPERIMENTED MOST OF HIS FREE TIME WITH TAKING VIDEOS OF ME.” Vikram has hopes that she may agree to act one day. “As a director’s riyaaz, how do you practise? On 26 July 2005 it was flooded, we had just got married, sitting at home with no electricity…we were rolling a torch around and spontaneously decided to make a horror film. She’s a great actress. Shooting her first karva chauth is actually one of the best things I have done.”

THE JOURNEY’S BEEN LONG AND TOUGH. While his debut film Udaan hit instant success, sending shock reverberations through the industry, Vikram has faced many moments of frustration waiting over a decade for his moment in time, doing everything from shooting songs, sound design, editing, writing, cinematography…. “I was a gung-ho kind of guy. Anyone I knew who needed something, I would raise my hand saying, ‘I’ll do it.’ I wanted to direct very early, but you need to do the grunt work. When it was happening, I was really angry. I could see guys around me making films, making bad films and I am thinking, ‘Come on, give me a chance!’ But I have no regrets. I’m glad it’s taken this long.”

WHEN NO ONE WAS READY TO BANK MONEY ON VIKRAM’S UDAAN, his friend, Anurag Kashyap stepped in as producer. They’ve been an ego-free, solid writing team – Vikram finds it easier to think and write in English, Kashyap converts the screenplay into Hindi for him, making suggestions along the way. “I get someone of his talent and objectivity and it really works.”

“I DID FEEL PARANOID WHILE SHOOTING A BIGGER-BUDGET LOOTERA (2013). I’d watch a promo of another film on TV while eating dinner and I would think, ‘This is commercial cinema, and what the hell am I doing?’ I was quite miserable shooting this film. I didn’t want to make it.” Laughs. “Not really, but I kept second-guessing myself. I’m so glad I made it, because you need to dive into the deep end. I want to make a bigger film than I have made previously. It’s so easy to get stuck in this industry as ‘that director who makes 5-crore films’; I’ve seen it happen.” Is that the right motivation? “No, it’s not. But that’s not my motivation.”

“MY MOTIVATION IS SIMPLY TELLING STORIES. Challenging the audience, challenging yourself. Success is useful if it allows me to make the films I want to make in a larger budget. I don’t think I’ve changed as a person – and I don’t think I will, because I have people (looks fondly at Ishika) who keep me stable.”

“EMOTION IS WHAT WORKS. Whether it’s what I do, or what Sanjay (Bhansali) does or Rohit Shetty does. I do like that sense of high opera and high drama: approach even a small story as if you are telling a bigger story in the world. I liked Udaan, because the small story is mounted on a larger scale with the music and the heightened scenes. You wish it were you. And that is commercial cinema.”

“I’VE BEEN CALLED A COCONUT, hard on the outside, soft on the inside. She’ll cry 20 times a year, I’ll cry once in two years.” As Vikram pauses, Ishika steps in. “He is very emotional, very sensitive. Not touchy, but he observes and absorbs a lot. If I am upset and I’m trying not to show it, he can tell. It’s wonderful in a relationship. And I know when he’ll want to cry. Those points – the moments of struggle, when he really wanted to make it, and it finally reached that peak. He broke down – because he read the script of Ayan’s (Mukerji) movie I was working on, Wake Up Sid (2009), which he really liked. What I admire about him is that he’s had those long years of struggle and he’s not bitter at all. He was unhappy, angry, but never bitter.”

“THE BEST FILMS FOR ME ARE THE ONES THAT HAVE MORE THAN A LOVE STORY IN THEM; so a Pyaasa (1957) or a Bandini (1963) or a Guide (1965). We don’t make those now. I did try to put a girl in Udaan because producers suggested it. But I couldn’t make it work like that – it’s actually a love story between two boys (brothers).” Ishika says, “I grew up watching Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart stuff. I had to catch up a lot on movies…I would ask Vikram not to put something complicated on and he put on A Separation (2011). I was riveted…. I howled at the end and whacked him ten times. You totally buy into that kind of emotion. It’s so real.”

As are they. They may have a long way to go; they may have not travelled as much as they’d like to because they “have been broke for a long time.” But there’s something about their confidence in each other, their complete sense of togetherness that makes one believe.

To The Manner Born: Sonakshi Sinha

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Interviews: Cover Stories, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Bollywood, Imran Khan, India, Interview, Interviews: Cinema, Sonakshi Sinha, Verve Magazine, Vikramaditya Motwane

Published: Verve Magazine, Cover Story, August 2013

Sanskaar is a word often associated with her, she says. Sonakshi Sinha is unabashedly confident, reclusively shy and riding a wave of professional good fortune. The homegrown actor is uncomplicated and easy-going…and quintessentially Indian…

She is always excruciatingly punctual. Apparently, on set she’s the first one in – ready before even the lighting guys have set up. At magazine shoots, she’s there with at least a couple of minutes to spare. Sonakshi Sinha crashes on the bed of the hotel suite we are shooting in and experiences a ‘lazy’ moment. Indigo skinny jeans, fitted tee and a smart cropped black leather jacket, a faint hint of lipstick and reflector shades complete the biker-chic look.

We chat lightly. Her grilled cheese sandwich and fries are on their way. While she agrees that an Indian woman is meant to be traditionally curvy and voluptuous, you find that she looks surprisingly slimmer in person than she did recently on screen, and her stomach is enviably flat – but her face is as captivating when she breaks into a smile. That smile reaches her large, expressive coffee-brown eyes that are immersive and can sparkle with a mood of their own. When her lip curls in dissatisfaction, it takes you back to her recent role of Pakhi from Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera, seared in our memory, as she transcends the elongated scenes in the movie with her emotiveness. She speaks easily, points out that she keeps getting asked certain questions – answers to which she’s “rattoed” (memorised by rote) and admits she enjoyed our little conversation.

The largely well-received Lootera was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I felt it was written for me”. People kept telling her not to do the film, that it was meant for a more mature actress, but she figured it was a dream role. And, she admits, the very fact that people were advising her against it goaded her to go for it. While she makes no pretense to high cinema, the 26-year-old girl, who’s taken on masala blockbuster movies head-on and won the heart of the hinterlands, feels that a slow, period romance like Lootera has given her recognition as an actor.

She comes on the set, gets ready with her lines and awaits the director’s instruction. Opening each day with a clean slate, she prefers to be moulded according to the director’s vision, believing that no one understands the character better. In her upcoming release this month, the Akshay Kumar-Imran Khan starrer, Once Upon A Time In Mumbai Dobaara, she plays a girl who makes the move from Kashmir to Mumbai to act. The first Milan Luthria film was a gangster thriller; the sequel has a stronger love angle, requiring a different chemistry for each character (Akshay and Imran), and balancing that became a challenge for her. “I was never a movie buff – I watched very few movies. I like to observe people and their nuances. I meet so many people every day – there is so much variety.”

“Sonakshi is professional, dedicated, fearless and magical. She has a wonderful presence – if she chooses her roles well over the next few years she could be one of the all-time greats.”
– Vikramaditya Motwane, director

Standing tall at five feet and eight inches, she’s comfortable in her own skin, but remains a quiet person. “I am a Gemini – two sides of a coin. I’m a shy person; I like to be by myself sometimes. I don’t overindulge in conversations with people I wouldn’t know.” She knows she’s here to do a certain job and that’s all that matters. “Some people are just meant to do what they are meant to do. I’ve inherited it from my father (actor-politician, Shatrughan Sinha) – he’s a very confident person. Besides, I don’t have anything not to be confident about – I’m very happy, I’m doing well; I’m working hard.” But it’s an industry of insecurities. “That’s what a lot of people tell me. I don’t know. I don’t want to be the centre of attention, I’m not insecure, I’m very comfortable with who I am, with what I’m doing, I don’t poke my nose into other people’s business. I guess that makes me a misfit!”

Sonakshi has her life cleanly compartmentalised. “I switch on and switch off with the camera. I don’t like to take my work home, I don’t like to talk about it; at home it’s a completely different life.”

Preferring to hang out with her school and college friends rather than fraternising with industry people, she says, “Going out for events and promotions, crowds of people yelling and shouting your name – that’s where it ends. At home I’m not a star, I’m my parents’ daughter and my brothers’ sister. If I do something wrong I’m reprimanded for it.” Having lived an unabashedly sheltered life while growing up (not being allowed to go abroad to study or to join her brothers at Kodai International boarding school), she admits, “I still have to be home at 1.30 a.m. when I go out! I have a deadline…it’s always been like that.”

Her mother used to be by her side all the time when Sonakshi had just started her movie career, but now she leaves her to figure things out for herself. “While she knows we are always there for her, workspaces have changed today. She’s grown up now, she understands her limits,” says erstwhile actress, Poonam Sinha who recalls how her daughter has always been sure of herself, quick to take a decision, with no qualms after. “She used to sketch much before she knew she wanted a career in fashion design. She would throw the sheets away, but I used to collect her sketches. Even her foray into films – she entered without any formal training in acting, dance or dialogue delivery. But she was confident from day one. I remember Salman Khan saying to her, ‘Wow, you are a one-take artist!’ She also has a strong gut instinct – she had a feeling about Pakhi (Lootera), that no one but she could play that role. She didn’t think twice.”

Sonakshi has wriggled into a very specific niche in Hindi cinema, quietly making it her own. Somehow, that garners the most queries from viewers who are now accustomed to bare-all-wear-nothing heroines. “It’s ironic that people keep asking me why I keep doing traditional roles as opposed to glamorous ones and no one asks any other Hindi cinema actress why she doesn’t do traditional roles as opposed to glamorous ones! We are talking about India, aren’t we,” she snips back with a smile. Playing a UP girl in Dabangg, a Bihari in Rowdy Rathore, a Punjabi kudi in Son of Sardaar, a Bengali in Lootera and now a Kashmiri girl in Once Upon a Time…she’s been captivated by the places she’s shot in. “I’ve covered most parts of India and found the interiors of the country fascinating. While sitting in the city (Mumbai) we tend to plan vacations abroad, and shooting in these locales has been an eye-opener…they are beautiful! And, I love Mumbai. However much we may crib about the mess and the roads, there’s just something about being home – about this being home,” she says with a broad sweep of her hands, encompassing the rain-tossed waves and palm fronds of Juhu beach outside the windows.

You don’t think she’ll hop off to perform a puja anytime soon, but you do think that she’s been raised to be careful of her screen presence and of her public persona. To be mindful of the way her actions would reflect upon her family. “The world has moved on, children live in a freer world, inspired by the West, but we are a very conventional family. She knew her dos and don’ts. Her father comes from that part of India, is a politician…she’s had to understand her responsibility,” says Poonam Sinha. Sonakshi adds, “There has never been any pressure from their side to do any of it – it’s just the way I have been brought up. I am a certain way, I don’t wear certain kinds of clothes, and we are a conservative family. It’s a part of my value system. My upbringing has everything to do with my rootedness and morals. It’s instinctive. Today wherever I go, when I meet somebody senior, actors or technicians, they give a direct compliment to my parents by saying, ‘I want my daughter to be just like you,’ and they use the words sanskaar a lot.”

“She’s got the swagger and attitude of Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar, and what makes them attractive is what makes her attractive: her inherent confidence and security. She’s simple, straightforward and uncomplicated.”
– Imran Khan, actor and co-star

So she sinks easily into her onscreen traditional avatar. She dons the saris and bindis and smiles beatifically into the camera. She’s mastered the art of holding her face at an angle just right, so that her sharp profile can be seen at its best advantage – she knows she can charm the audience with her warm smile and demure flicker of her eyelashes. And when I relate what her co-star and director have to say about her for this interview, you can’t miss the faint blush creeping up. She’s bashful; she’s smiling, she’s unable to look up. “The overall perception is that the youth is getting immoral – but that is a generalisation. I think India remains a rooted country, a country bound by values. That’s the basic story.”

Power Women 2013

19 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Business, Interviews: Cinema, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Verve Magazine, Vidya Balan

Published: Verve Magazine, Annual Power List, Feature, Power Rush

Kareena KAPOOR
32 POWER SIREN
A fiery mix of impeccable genes, experience and natural talent have kept Kareena Kapoor Khan going strong years after contemporaries have lost steam. The zesty Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham has matured into a seasoned actress who can carry films with her massive screen presence, proving that an actress in a serious relationship doesn’t lose out on the popularity scale. From holding the weight of a movie like Heroine that suffered from poor scripting, to adding punch to a light movie like Ekk Main Aur Ekk Tu, from playing a defining character role in Talaash to becoming attached to the male-dominated 100-crore club movie successes, she has proven that nothing can shake her and she can juggle multiple roles. Not to mention, having had what has been pegged by a Wall Street Journal blogger as ‘India’s wedding and social event of the year’ – a power wedding with beau, the Nawab of Pataudi, Saif Ali Khan last year. In association with Globus, she is the first Indian actress to launch her own line of clothing. Voted India’s Hottest Woman by a glossy and recently ranked one of India’s most influential women, she has also co-authored two fitness books and last year, her own memoir, The Style Diary Of A Bollywood Diva.

METHODOLOGY: None. She has been pegged as an ‘instinctive actor with emotional intelligence’ who refuses to rehearse for her roles preferring to rely on spontaneity.

COMING-OF-AGE ROLE: Chameli, a sex worker in Chameli (2004). It defined her as a versatile actress with depth.

TRACES ONLINE: None. Despite buddy Karan Johar’s desire to get Kareena Kapoor on Twitter, she has steered clear of any social media and most media in general.

FRAGRANT CAUSE: Jean Paul Gaultier Classique perfume, her all-time favourite.

Nina LATH GUPTA
48 POWER HEAD
The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) saw a dramatic change after Nina Lath Gupta came on board as managing director. With a slimmer, restructured team that harps on transparency and accountability, the NFDC shies away from government and bureaucratic stereotypes. Determined to ensure that the NFDC produces films that will make cinematic history, but big production houses won’t touch, Gupta has been breaking new ground. Recognising the need for development of good writing, they set up the Screenwriters’ Lab, under the NFDC Labs. Their home video label, Cinemas of India, saw reruns of all the DVDs they have released to date. The Film Bazaar, which runs parallel to the International Film Festival of India in Goa is an incubator of talent, with art-house films (including South-Asia films) regularly getting picked up for the festival circuit from there. In real terms, the NFDC saw a dramatic leap in turnover from Rs 12 crores in 2006 to Rs 255 crores in 2011- 2012 under her leadership, turning a struggling enterprise into a dynamic and profitable one. Last year, The Hollywood Reporter featured Gupta as one of the 12 outstanding international women achievers in the field of entertainment, and she regularly speaks at film festivals across the world, while also being on the jury of the Venice Film Festival (2010).

BIGGEST CHALLENGE: “The ability to keep pace with the times, of being able to constantly adapt according to the needs of the time and ensuring that our activities are in tune with the requirements of the talent and creative pool we work with.”

STRONG PERSONALITY TRAIT: “Unrelenting perfectionist.”

ABOUT THE JOB: “It begins with a love for the movies. But gradually that passion grew with an increasing awareness of the immense power that the motion pictures have in influencing individuals and thereby society. This in turn created a consciousness of the immense responsibility that filmmakers carry.”

2012-13 WAS ABOUT…“Initiating Phase II of NFDC’s growth and taking small steps in the direction of setting up platforms that aim at last mile connectivity for good cinema with audiences.”

Pankaja THAKUR
42 POWER FILTER
The chief executive of the Central Board of Film Certification or the Censor Board of India has headed tough decisions on ratings and cuts in Indian cinema, leading to resentment from many and approval from some. She’s in the unique situation of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Movies that go through with stringent censoring give rise to social questions like – ‘are the recent atrocities against women a throwback to violence in cinema?’ Movies that face savage cuts or ‘A’ ratings get a rise out of the filmmakers. While there have been altercations on films like 2011’s blockbuster, The Dirty Picture (which withstood 52 cuts) and Ashwin Kumar’s documentary, Inshallah, Football (2010) which got an ‘A’ rating, she’s taken tough decisions on international films as well, such as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011), which didn’t end up being screened in India. She was one of the panellists to object to Sheila Ki Jawaani (the song from Tees Maar Khan). ‘I would not like my daughter singing, “I am too sexy for you,” as the lyrics of the song go, but we cannot bring in our personal value systems while making decisions.’

ALTERNATIVE CAREER: As a bureaucrat with the Indian customs agency, she has headed assignments like one involving screening baggage at the Mumbai International Airport.

DEFINITION OF POWER: “The freedom to make choices and the ability to take decisions for oneself and for others.”

BIGGEST CHALLENGE: “To keep myself and others working with me motivated. With fixed salaries and time-bound promotions the drive to improve is difficult to generate.”

A WORD OF ADVICE: “My advice to all new civil servants is to begin their day with this prayer: God give me the ability to change things that I can, The serenity to accept things that I cannot change…the wisdom to understand the difference between the two.”

WAYS TO RELAX: “I meditate and listen to music.”

Roshni NADAR MALHOTRA
31 POWER HEIRESS
The only daughter of Shiv Nadar, chairman of the $6 billion-listed HCL Group that includes HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems, is all set to take over as chairman after her father retires. Currently, she is CEO and executive director of the corporation and is a trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, managing the latter’s philanthropic initiatives. She drives Vidya Gyan – an initiative that provides free education to people from underprivileged backgrounds and is on its way to open a third school. Planning to steer clear of a corporate role despite her impending appointment, the Kellogg School of Management alumnus wants to concentrate on the philanthropic activities.

FAMILY TIES: Married to Babson (US) alumnus, Shikhar Malhotra, who founded an auto retail venture, and is now the chief executive of Shiv Nadar School. They have a son.

CREATIVE PURSUITS: Is a trained classical musician.

ALTERNATE CAREER: Has an undergraduate degree in Communications, majoring in radio, television and film from Northwestern University (USA) and has worked briefly as a news producer for SkyNews (UK) and CNN (America).

LANDING GROUND: She lives in New Delhi.

Mary KOM
30 POWER WINNER
Five-time world boxing champion and the only woman boxer to have won a medal in each one of the six world championships, Mary Kom belongs to the Kom tribal community in Manipur. She is the only Indian woman boxer to have qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and returned with the bronze medal. The recent Padma Bhushan (Sports) awardee has also been ranked as No 4 AIBA World Women’s Ranking Flyweight category, while locally she has been felicitated with a host of awards like the Padma Shri (Sports) and Arjuna Award (Boxing). Her personal story of rising to great heights in an unconventional sport from a simple beginning has led to a Hindi feature film being made by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, on her life, with Priyanka Chopra essaying her life.

ON REACHING HIGHS: “I am a strong believer in ‘Apna karm karo, fal ki chinta mat karo’ (Do your work without worry about the result). Thank you so much for giving me such an honour; I will keep working harder and harder to take the Indian flag to new highs.”

SUCCESS MANTRA: “You reap what you sow. Work hard, be disciplined, be grounded, be polite to everyone, share your experience with your colleagues and juniors.”

UNWINDS BY: “I hardly get a chance to relax, but whenever I get the time, I listen to music and enjoy quality time with my husband and children.”

A NORMAL DAY: “I get up early and do my daily morning exercise and training; then after breakfast, lunch and a rest, I go in for my evening training.”

BIGGEST CHALLENGES: “To keep myself physically and mentally fit and try to avoid injuries during training sessions and competitions.”

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: “Without any doubt, my Olympic medal. This medal has given me an opportunity to let the whole world know about Mary Kom, what she has done in her long boxing career. I hope my journey will inspire other upcoming talents.”

Shikha SHARMA
54 POWER BANKER
Awards spill out of her hat like rabbits do from a magician’s! And she managed to turn what could have been a windfall – ceding a possible CEO position at ICICI Bank to Chanda Kochhar after 29 years of service there – to a position of strength. The IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus has been the managing director and CEO of Axis Bank since 2009, and India’s third largest bank in the private sector saw a spurt of 30 per cent last year to $55 billion. She is bullish on growth, and if the recent stock price is anything to go by, people believe her story.

Since taking charge, she has more than doubled the bank’s network to 1,500 branches and 8,300-plus ATMs. The Transformational Business Leader of the Year (AIMA’s Managing India Awards), Woman Leader of the Year (Bloomberg-UTV Financial Leadership Awards), and Businessworld’s Banker of the Year’ has somehow also managed to squeeze into the Forbes List of Asia’s 50 Power Business Women, Indian Express’ Most Powerful Indians and India Today’s Power List of 25 Most Influential Women, all in 2012. This is the same woman who during her post-MBA placement wasn’t able to land a job until day 8 or 9. She was rejected by foreign banks which gave her confidence a drubbing.

IDENTIFIABLE PERSONALITY TRAIT: “Self-belief.”

FAMOUS QUOTE: ‘I want to make Axis Bank India’s JPMorgan.’

ADMIRES: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan (US). Also looks up to Gandhiji and corporate leaders like Ratan Tata.

FAMILY TIES: Her husband, Sanjay Sharma, is the MD of Tata Interactive Systems. Her son is a part of a startup at Silicon Valley. She also has a daughter.

PERSONAL TIME: She has studied Hindustani classical music.

Vidya BALAN
34 POWER EMOTER
The moment the supremely talented actress became comfortable in her own skin, the entire world fell at her feet. Her success has not been merely accolades and awards, critics and popular appeal – though she has had those in liberal doses. Hers has been the power of taking a formula-driven industry and turning it on its head to prove that rules can be broken, and to make her choices game-changers. While she bagged several awards for her role as a pregnant woman in search of her missing husband in Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012), post the spate of hugely successful author-backed roles, she has now been considered a ‘female hero’ – toppling the notion of a male lead in a largely male-dominated industry. Last year, not only did she marry beau UTV CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur, she also became the youngest recipient of the Prabha Khaitan Puraskar awarded by the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce for her attempts to empower women. In May, she was part of the jury panel at the 66th Cannes International Film Festival, taking the respect for her acumen and sensibility overseas.

UNWINDS BY: “At the end of every day, I sit on my balcony and watch the waves and think about nothing.”

LESSONS LEARNT: “Firstly, there are no rules. Secondly, anyone who tells you otherwise knows no better. Thirdly, and most importantly, have faith in yourself, if you don’t – no one will.”

IDENTIFIABLE PERSONALITY TRAIT: “Self-belief.”

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT: “I’ve begun to love and accept myself more and more.”

BIGGEST PASSION: “People.”

MOTIVATING FACTOR: “My love for life keeps me going, and my love for love keeps me going!”

Vrinda GROVER
49 POWER ACTIVIST
Self-belief, conviction, and a strong sense of purpose define this human-rights activist and New Delhi-based lawyer. She has done extensive work on rape laws and women’s issues. Seeing harassment of women in public areas and in colleges, she became a part of a street theatre group and one thing led to another and she became a lawyer standing up for the rights of women and human rights in general, particularly for those who have slipped through the cracks of the system, not just the privileged lot. For her tireless efforts to change the system, brought particularly in the limelight with the brutal gang rape in Delhi, she was one of the three Indians who made it to Time’s 100 most influential people in the world.

POWER LISTER: “I don’t attach any significance to these ‘lists’. They view life through the lens of individual achievements. The credit for foregrounding the issue of violence against women and the changes in law and policy must be given to the collective struggle and strength of the women’s movements in India.”

DAY IN THE LIFE: “Each day is different, as I engage with human rights through many forums – the courts, campaigns, meetings, street protests and read, write and ruminate in my office.”

BIGGEST CHALLENGES: “Those tasked with upholding the rights of people, are violating them the most. Anger and despair are driving people to think that violence – à la death penalty – is a solution. The subversion of Indian democracy by corporate power and dominant communal forces. And of course patriarchy!”

Rohini IYER
31 POWER MOVER
You can’t get to most top Indian cinema celebrities without coming into contact with their publicist Rohini Iyer, who named her PR agency Raindrop Media after the song, ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head….’ This may prove that she’s a romantic at heart, but it belies the fact that she’s tough and intractable and manages one of the topmost agencies on her own steam. Her current roster of names includes Kareena Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Vidya Balan, Priyanka Chopra, Abhishek Bachchan, Ekta Kapoor and Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Not surprising then, that Iyer has resounding clout in an industry she understands and navigates well.

POWER LISTER: “I’m constantly trying to push the envelope – and these honours are extremely encouraging.”

SUCCESS MANTRA: “Always listen to your gut instinct. Always stand for something you believe in.”

TIME OFF: “I don’t switch off…. But I make it a point to watch at least one movie a day and am an avid reader.”

FUTURE PLANS: “World cinema is still waiting. All I want is everything!”

BIGGEST CHALLENGES: “I love crises. It’s challenging to not lose your calm in the face of a crisis and that is what Raindrop thrives on.”

CAREER ADVICE: “‘Greed is good’ – to quote Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.”

IDENTIFIABLE PERSONALITY TRAIT: “Killer instinct.”

Saina NEHWAL
23 POWER PLAYER
The lithe Haryana-born girl from Hyderabad made her country proud with a bronze at the London Olympics last year. Valiantly holding her number two ranking by the Badminton World Federation for over two years, she is flying high, having bagged the Thailand and Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold, reclaimed her Indonesia Super Series Premier title and having become the second Indian to win the Denmark Open last year. NDTV editor, T S Sudhir, wrote An Inspirational Biography on the girl who watched badminton even from her pram, not to mention that primary school textbooks in Andhra Pradesh apparently carry a chapter on Nehwal. Last year, she became India’s highest paid non-cricketing sportsperson after reportedly signing an over $7 million three-year contract with a sports management firm.

STARTING OUT: “I would get up at 4 a.m. and catch a bus at 4.30 a.m. for the stadium 25 km away. I would skip the last two periods of school and practise till seven or eight. I often slept in the bus or even on the scooter. I have lost several racquets in autos.”

GETTING THERE: “Even while growing up I would love working hard. My body would hurt after workouts, but I loved the pain. I do not think that I have missed something in my life. I want to make myself so perfect that I will become World No 1. That is my target.”

PROVERBS TO PROVE WRONG: “Many Indians would say, ‘Padhoge likhoge banoge nabab, kheloge kudo ge honge kharrab’ (If you learn to read and write, you can be on top of the world; if you play sport, it will ruin you). I changed the proverb and proved that sports is a neglected field in India, where a lot more is to be done.”

LIKES TO UNWIND BY… “Sleeping and watching a movie.”

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: “I hope the Olympic medal is a big one, but every win is a win for me.”

Purva NARESH
38 POWER TALENT
Trained Kathak danseuse and award-winning short filmmaker, Purva Naresh wears many hats. She juggles between being a writer, director, and producer of Aarambh, a theatre group that produces musicals, plays and short films and holds down a day job as head of production of motion pictures for Reliance Entertainment while also choreographing and designing costumes for stage. She has written Afsaneh: Bai Se Bioscope Tak, and has adapted stories of Ruskin Bond for A Special Bond 1 and 2, while her feature film credits include Hanuman, Kisna: The Warrior Poet and Krrish. She swivels between earning wins and nominations at the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META), and earlier this year she was the recipient of The Laadli National Media Awards (Best Drama) for her play Ok Tata Bye Bye. She was invited to give a reading of the play at The Royal Court Theatre, London.

POWER IS: “The ability to take and execute my own decisions.”

SUCCESS MANTRA: “Keep calm and carry on.”

UNWINDS BY: “Jogging, dancing, reading, watching a movie or a play.”

A NORMAL DAY IS: “Hectic. Impossible. Promising….”

BIGGEST CHALLENGES: “Time management and my impatience.”

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: “When my mother finally approved of my play, after I did seven!”

Pernia QURESHI
27 POWER ENTREPRENEUR
Post experience in New York, the fashionista and stylist moved back home and landed her dream job of dressing up beautiful women in couture. Not content with that, she capitalised on the market space and took it a step further by launching her online store, Perniaspopupshop.com. Last year she managed to get top-line designers to give her rotating capsule collections to showcase and purchase directly from her store, and has also launched her own collection online along with the popular names. Aisha (2010) was the first Hindi feature film she styled, which brought couture to the forefront of Indian cinema. And the trained Kuchipudi dancer made it to the cover of Verve’s best-dressed list last year.

POWER IS… “To be able to do exactly what one wants to do.”

SUCCESS MANTRA: “Hard work, conviction, a great attitude and passion.”

UNWINDS BY: “Eating good food and hanging out with friends.”

A NORMAL DAY: “If I’m in Delhi, then I spend the first half dancing (Kuchipudi) and the second half working (office, shoots and meetings).”

BIGGEST CHALLENGES: “Finding sincere people to build a team for work. I think I have done a good job but it was tough.”

CAREER ADVICE: “Be prepared to work 24/7.”

IDENTIFIABLE PERSONALITY TRAIT: “Honesty.”

Priyanka CHOPRA
30 POWER BEAT-MAKER
Fame is a funny thing. It brought India’s Miss World to the top echelons of stardom as a beauty pageant contestant, as a movie star, and now the talented actress has an international music record label to add to her list of credits. In July 2012, Chopra became the first Hindi movie actor to be signed by an LA-based entertainment and sports agency. Her first album is set to release this year and she debuted her first single In My City with rapper Will.i.am, which was launched on NFL’s Thursday Night Football after being unveiled in India. In last year’s Barfi!, she essayed the role of Jhilmil Chatterjee, an autistic woman who falls in love with a deaf-mute man. Here we find a powerful actor: Priyanka’s glamorous screen persona disappears and Jhilmil’s character comes alive. Possibly one of the reasons that Sanjay Leela Bhansali has chosen a mainstream actor like her to portray Mary Kom in the latter’s biopic. And PC’s own peripatetic story forms the first chapter of an Environmental Studies book as part of the curriculum in a reputed Bengaluru CBSE school.

CELEBRITY LIFE: “I am being watched all the time. Even simple things like scratching my nose will get captured in all their glory!”

PERSONAL LIFE: “The only thing I guard very carefully is my personal life. It’s never been a question of hiding any of the relationships, but more about keeping them away from public glare. I’m not comfortable opening the doors of my private world for the world to see….”

ON HER OTHER LOVE: “I can’t think or function without music. My van, my room, my car are always blasting music, so the five minutes I get, become my chill-out zone. And besides my family, that’s the one thing I find time for.”

PERSONAL QUIRK: Her DVDs are all labelled and numbered.

Girl On A Wire: Cover Story with Parineeti Chopra

21 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Interviews: Cover Stories, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Bollywood, indiancinema, Interview, Parineeti Chopra, vervemagazine

Published: Verve Magazine, September 2012, Cover Story
Photographs by Vishesh Verma

She is touted as the industry ’s great new talent on the block, on the watch list of every major director and actor. Six months after her first film released, she is already working on her third. It is a rapid start for any newcomer, particularly one who became an actor because she got a return ticket to Mumbai instead of Delhi! PARINEETI CHOPRA is refreshingly easy to talk to and incredibly laidback in general, finds SITANSHI TALATI-PARIKH, as she chats with the banker who became a movie star

Alive wire buzzes with an electric current that creates energy all on its own, without sapping any other source. In cinema, the screen is ripped to shreds with the power of its intensity. She has a lovely structured face, instantly appealing with its generous smile, fiery light-brown eyes, and translucent skin. She has a particularly defiant tilt to her jawline – as she speaks, she unconsciously lifts her face upwards, as if willing the world to see where she is headed. And yet, she believes it’s all just destiny. After all, that is what her name means.

“I dreamed of being a very different person – the CEO of one of the biggest banks in the world.” And clutching onto that lifetime’s vision, Parineeti Chopra found herself floundering while looking for a finance job. “Twenty-one years of my life I dreamt of being a banker. I worked all my life for it; I went to London. The year I graduated, was a recession – a financial breakdown in the world. I’d taken an educational loan, followed my dreams and gone there to study… everything finished for me.”

That’s when she picked up the bits and decided to return to India. Used to working and buying her own ticket home, she found that it was cheaper to fly into Mumbai – a city she had never previously visited – than to fly to Delhi; staying with her cousin, actress Priyanka Chopra, before returning home. The day after Parineeti arrived into the city, Priyanka had a shoot at the YRF studios. She accompanied her to see the studio, out of curiosity. “When I came here, I saw things like ‘Producer’ and ‘Director’ written on the walls – and found it so strange. It fascinated me, as a fan. I haven’t grown up on films – I used to read finance books, I was very nerdy. When I saw this place (we are currently at the very same studios), I thought about applying for a job here – in finance or accounts, maybe.”

And so, using one of her other majors, Parineeti ended up doing marketing. “I started seeing the actors here, and initially I used to look down upon them – they put on make-up, go on set, earn so much money, they are in the biggest cars, best hotels in the world, everything is paid for….” Ironically, now, for her, that is a checklist with all the boxes ticked. “But with a very different frame of mind,” she insists. “Now, even if I hear that some actor is paid 25 crores, or some unrealistic figure like that, I don’t find it strange anymore – because working with them made me realise why actors are paid so much, why they are famous and so sought after, why their lives affect so many lives. I felt then that this is a creative field, requiring a lot of intelligence. Not only banking. I used to think that because I read out of a book and because I am making money for my clients, I’m very intelligent. That’s when I decided to be an actor.”

A staffer nervously hands her a cup of her special hazelnut coffee, profusely apologising for being late, checking if it is okay. She notices my amused expression. “I think it’s sweet. I’ve done this for people. I know I’ve not done anything to deserve it, but I know it is a natural thing. This importance is what I didn’t understand earlier about actors…but I guess, now I get it.” Parineeti says it without a sense of wonderment. “You work in an office,” she gesticulates, using me as an example. “Imagine if you were suddenly made the owner of the magazine! Yash Raj treats its actors like stars: you are given that much pampering and importance, freedom and decision-making power, however new you may be. I used to coordinate interviews and order food for actors (everyone from Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Ranveer Singh to Anushka Sharma, Deepika Padukone, Rani Mukerji and even her cousin, Priyanka). I used to take care of them, be their security person when they were out in the crowd. Suddenly you are elevated to a pedestal that you only used to be a caretaker of.”

The daughter of an NRI mom and Haryana’s Ambala-bornand-raised dad, left home at the age of 15 to study, and is fiercely independent and self-sufficient. “I had a very balanced childhood. Six months of the year I used to be in Ambala as a small-town girl with a very conservative, disciplined upbringing and six months I would live the life of utmost luxury with my billionaire grandparents abroad. I am a good-mannered, good girl, yet very open-minded in life. I get to see my parents thrice a year. They let me take my own decisions – all I have to do is inform them.” And yet, the 23-year-old admits she is not a great judge of people. “I’m not naive, but with people I do go wrong. Someone needs to come and tell me, ‘Why are you saying this to so-and-so, or why are you being so-and-so with so-and-so…’ and until someone tells me, it won’t occur to me. And I’m not a big star that people need to suck up to me!”

She stops, takes a sip from a glass full of green liquid – spinach juice, she reveals with a wry grin, a formula she is using to improve her near-perfect skin so that she can face the camera without make-up for her next film. It’s a big step for a girl who has a chronic weakness for pizza – averaging four a week – to watch what she eats. “I don’t want to lose a lot of weight. But I like to be fit and I like to get into a regime before my next film so that I don’t get tired on set. Sometimes the director asks for 15 takes – and if I don’t have the energy to give that I may regret it for the rest of my life.”

As she murmurs approval over my bright coral bag, I’m certain there must be a girl in there who reads the fashion blogs and watches her choices being torn to shreds with the appearances she has made – including the big one at a film magazine’s awards ceremony where she stepped up to receive the best actress debut award for Ladies Vs. Ricky Bahl. “I’m wearing jeans today. It’s a big thing – people think I’m dressed up when I wear jeans. I have a whole pile of track pants and ganjees. That’s all I wear in my personal life. My hair is always in a mess.” She takes a breath, giving a clue to the fact that this may have hit home. “I don’t care about clothes. But I know that when I step out I need to look a certain way. Unfortunately, I don’t have the acumen to dress well. I’m just not that person. So now I do have a stylist to help me. I would never want people to say, ‘She is horribly dressed; she only knows how to act!’ I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes, because I’m so illiterate about what looks good on me or what’s in fashion. I have a very tricky body – I am not a very thin girl, so it is hard to dress me. But I am going to make an effort and try and look better. Just give me that time. I don’t have the vision of me as the actor, which needs to be sold in the industry. I wish I had grown up wanting to be an actor – I would have been so much more prepared.”

Prepared or not, she’s clearly gritty and hard-working to the extent of being tenacious about her roles, her characters, her life. Her screen presence has been remarkable and yet, apparently effortless. She enjoyed Ricky Bahl… and that created ripples on screen; she “gave my heart and soul” in Ishaqzaade and received critical acclaim. “There is a rule in the industry where actresses don’t get all the good roles. I would never say it is male-oriented, but there are better roles for men, which makes men huger stars than women. There are very few huge female stars, because they have been blessed with three or four really great evergreen roles. In my films, I think both characters are memorable – in absolutely different ways. I hope I get more such characters. I want to be a successful actor, which comes with successful characters, good characters.” An admirer of Vidya Balan and Rani Mukerji’s author-backed roles, she automatically shies away from ‘package films’ that rely upon a single selling point like money or a famous actor or a director on a winning spree. She needs something to keep her interested, to keep her wanting more. “I have a very short attention span. If you put me in similar kinds of characters I couldn’t do it. Something that is not meaty enough for me as an actor bores me. I can’t work on those films – except when I’m tired and need a break between two intense films…I should use the energy I have right now until I start tiring.”

Parineeti07 Parineeti04

She’s been speaking rapidly, without hesitation, with a certain amount of lightheartedness that highlights her relaxed but upbeat demeanour, even as her work life steamrolls on. “I don’t mean to sound philosophical, but I’m just really happy in life. There are people – with due respect to them – who wait years and years for this to happen to them. I’m probably one of the more thankless ones, because I just got it – instead of running after it. I’m just plain happy.” She sounds dangerously blasé. “No – I’m saying this right now, but in three hours I may be crying saying I don’t know why I am an actor. I am a very extremist person. At this point I am content. I know this has happened to me. Life isn’t the same. But I haven’t dreamt about wanting to be an actor, so what has happened isn’t do-or-die for me. It’s not the hugest thing in the world. If I am successful, great. If not, I have my degree to fall back upon. The good thing is I don’t come from a film family. Today, my parents still say – do whatever you are doing until it makes you happy. When it doesn’t, do something else. Who knows – I may get bored of it, get married someday!”

There is something defiantly free spirited about her, that leaves one with the impression that she is in control, she needs to be in control, but occasionally spirals into the unknown ready to experiment at a moment’s choice. And she can surprise you with the things she says. “I’d like to believe I am very different, because nothing in this world means the world to me. Nothing. No one. Nothing. It could be my parents. People say you can’t live without your parents, but I know one day everybody is going to die and we are going to separate. I’m very realistic.” There is a moment of shock. Is there a little romantic girl? “I’m not a romantic person at all – I am very practical and realistic. Very. I will fall in love. And I know that the people that I love, I r-e-a-l-l-y love.” But these are people you can do without? “No! Not at all! They are very important to me. All I’m saying is that I don’t want anything to be the centre of my world because I’ll end up hurting myself. It’s just the kind of person I am. Whether it is money, or success in my career, or it’s my family or friends – I love everything and I want everything all the time till the day I die. But if something doesn’t work out, it’s okay. I don’t want it to shatter me. Whatever has happened to me is enough for it to go to anybody’s head. Because it’s happening so fast and happening so well. My name means ‘destiny’ and I really believe in destiny. I know that tomorrow if it is not meant to be, it will all be over, so I shouldn’t let it be the most important thing in the world to me.”

Parineeti’s wedding diary

The actor, who has so far had unrequited love on screen, is ready for a happy ending in real life.

THE GROOM “It’s a cliché, but I want my man to be like my father – I fi nd every other boy too pansy for me, because they are not brooding Punjabi Jatts.”

THE WOOING “My idea of romance is when a guy gives me no importance. I love it. I hate it when I get gifts, or when someone says, ‘Come, let’s go for dinner.’ But, ‘Just come over, we’ll watch a fi lm and order food’ – that’s fun. Just being a regular Punjabi man.”

THE RELATIONSHIP “I’m 23, I hope now I get into a good relationship. I’ve never been in a serious enough relationship to experience any kind of heartbreak. And that’s why I love Band Baaja Baraat – it says ‘Pyaar aur vyapaar ek saath ho sakte hain’.”

THE PROBLEMS “The privacy thing. Rumours in the p
apers link me up with various people – all friends; and now I can’t be seen with them! Even if I tell my mother there is nothing going on, there will be some seed planted in her mind. When I do have a boyfriend, I could never hide it. The problem now is if I am seen going on a late-night drive, or to the movies, people won’t think ‘how much fun they are having’, it will always be, ‘what is happening?’ It will always be negative, sleazier and shadier. But…it doesn’t deter me.”

THE LOCATION “A beach wedding! Water really turns me on…it could be a fake lake under a building, or even a rivulet, but I love water. Not sexually. It’s so strange; any sound of water – even a running tap – can calm me.”

THE CEREMONY “The wedding can be casual, where all my friends are bunked up in one hotel for three days. I’m not really into the ‘traditional, let’s do it the Hindu way’ or whatever. I’m not very religious. I just want a big party, with lots of food and…swimming!”

THE CLOTHES “The kind of looks we’re doing for the Verve shoot is exactly something that I would like to wear for my wedding. Something Indian, something beautiful, but not the usual traditional stuff. I think I look okay in Indian clothes.”

THE COLOUR “Onion pink. I like onion pink, a lot.”

Malaika Zayed Khan for Mother’s World Magazine

20 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Interviews: Cover Stories, Parenting, Publication: Mother's World

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Interview, Mother's World Magazine, Motherhood

Published: Mother’s World Magazine, September-November 2012, Cover Story

“I’m an out-with-them mum”

Malaika Khan makes the parenting thing seem a cakewalk. Less Stepford and more hip soccer mum, the soon-to-be-32-year-old vivacious and soft-spoken mother of two, is in her element with her life and family well in control. And she looks fabulous. Sitanshi Talati-Parikh takes a peek at woman behind the mother….

She is struggling to get her older son, Zidaan (4), in the mood for the Mother’s World photoshoot. He is not pleased at losing his time with his cousins Hrehaan and Hridhaan (Hrithik and Suzanne Roshan’s sons) who are over for their weekly play date. Malaika Zayed Khan is playing the role of super mom – cajoling the kids, smiling for the camera, popping into the kitchen to bring cheese slices on demand to appease Zidaan enough to take a shot, checking frequently if her guests – including the Mother’s World team – need anything to eat or drink. All the whirlwind activity is managed in a lovely blue day dress and stunner heels. “I’m still on the mission of losing weight. People who know me know that this is not me. I’ve always been a 44-kilo girl. I am 5 feet 2 inches, so 44 is a good weight for somebody of my height!” She’s a self-confessed foodie – to the extent that she can stare people down when they are eating enough to make them ask her if she would like a bite, she relates, with a peal of laughter.

The real challenge through her pregnancy has been losing weight, particularly her second one, which was a C-section. “It took me eight weeks before I could actually start working out. According to me, I have still got 10 kilos to go and I’m hoping it will happen by the end of this year. The first time (my weight loss) was so quick that I don’t even know where it went – because it was a normal delivery and also, I was far more conscious about what I ate – this time I’m eating what I feel like eating, when I feel like eating.” She works out three days a week with a trainer in what she terms ‘functional training’, which is a full body workout but using her own body weight rather than external weights. “I’ve been doing it for four months and I have been enjoying it – I haven’t had to sacrifice anything in terms of my food intake. It’s also genetics – I have it in my genes to be skinny – though I missed the height gene,” she chuckles.

As we track through her wooden-tiled living room to the marble floor bedroom, I express concern over ransacking her Juhu apartment. She reveals she is the person responsible for cleaning her house once a week. “No one is allowed to touch anything, the staff have to go wait in the kitchen. I’m a cleanliness freak…I set up my house every Sunday. Boarding school habits die hard!” It’s obvious then that she is a super active person, someone her husband refers to as one with ‘ants in her pants’. “People have this myth that pregnancy weight is so difficult to lose – in fact, it’s the easiest weight to lose. It’s how quickly you decide to tackle it. If you sit back and relax and enjoy life, it will pile on. I’m not a stay-at-home mum as much as an out-with-them mum.” She plays the role of soccer mom with ease: “trotting about everywhere”, taking Zidaan to all his classes (drawing, reading, writing), doing his kung-fu tumbles with him; simultaneously watching out for the younger one, Aariz (11 months) who is already attempting to walk – all of it becoming easier because of her naturally athletic body from years of enforced sports at boarding school.

Malaika’s a chronic planner – someone who always knew what she wanted when she wanted it, and luckily, managed to get it. “I completely planned my life – when I was going to have my first child, my second, when I was going to get married…when I was going to fall in love! It was a quick pregnancy each time, and I had planned a sufficient age gap between the kids.” I wonder if she’s got her children’s future planned as well? “No,” she laughs. “But yes, I’ve already told my son, you have to study law and you have to…” she breaks off with giggles. “My rule is that you have to complete your MBA and then you are done – you can then have the golden key of your life in your hands.” Coming from a secular household into a rather easy-going family, Malaika who is half-English, half-Hindu Jain, finds that she can even easily keep a balance culturally and let her sons experience a wide range of things.

What about keeping the kids grounded with fame surrounding them? “You have to let the child know his life, the only thing you can do as a parent is not let them think it all came easy. When we go shopping, and Zidaan wants to buy something, I never refuse. I put a hundred rupees in his pocket and tell him (with emphasis) that, ‘It is a hundred rupees – whatever comes in that money you can buy. And since it is a lot of money, you can buy at least three toys with it, so think wisely what you want to buy.’ We travel business class, not everybody travels business class. He can see it, and learn that if he wants to be somebody he has to work that hard. Just because he is an actor’s son, or has a grandfather, Sanjay Khan, or an uncle Hrithik Roshan, it doesn’t change him as a person.” Malaika admits, though, that she wouldn’t put him in a school just surrounded by celebrities – she would choose a more grounded school. Zidaan isn’t oblivious to his family’s chosen profession, however. He knows all his father’s and uncle’s films. “The other day I showed him a small episode from The Sword of Tipu Sultan, and he goes, ‘Dadu, that’s you!’” (Referring to his paternal grandfather, Sanjay Khan).

As the shots click by, we notice that Zidaan, who is known in the family as the “40-year-old man – with an old man’s soul” has settled comfortably into the nook of the sofa, clutching his sliced cheese roll in one hand and tucking the other arm around his little brother. Is it protective instinct, companionship or a sense of comfort? He isn’t in the least uneasy about having another person around sharing his parents’ time and affection, despite having got over three years of undivided attention. Malaika smiles at the thought; knowing it is something she has consciously worked towards and for which she has made an unconventional choice. “My theory was – if I give too much attention to the second one, the older one would feel the pinch. So, I focussed on the older one, because the younger was too little to know any better. When my older son was not around or asleep, I would go to my second child…to this day. I have left my second child to my mother and maid – both of whom have been wonderful – therefore not allowing my first child to feel at all insecure. Now I find Zidaan very connected with his brother, because he doesn’t feel jealously. I’m very vigilant – I look from the corner of my eye when I am hugging Aariz to see how Zidaan is reacting. This is my way of handling it – even if I may look back and find myself to have been the biggest fool for having given less attention to the younger one.”

While the baby of the family, Aariz, enjoys his toddlerhood, reaching out for things, gliding, looking at the AC vent and blowing out air with a cute rounding of his lips and a silent whistling sound; his mum proudly points out that Zidaan is thriving, with being able to spell his and his cousins’ names, knowing twenty words and framing sentences. Besides his martial arts, she’s trying to get him t
o play chess, but his father has drawn the line at pushing him into too many activities. “I’m getting him used to classes from now, so that when he needs to do more serious schoolwork later, he will be accustomed to the concept. These are not make-believe Einstein classes, these are fun activities incorporating knowledge – he enjoys doing it, I don’t force him into going.”

There is fun time – lots of it. “Holidays are just about the kids. Only twice a year do Zayed and I take off on our own and for no more than four days. We have flown back many times because I have started crying and having palpitations! Fifteen-day holidays without the kids didn’t work. Our holidays are adventurous…. In fact, I was hoping I would be charged enough to go for another child, hoping it would be a girl, but I’ll just hold on to that thought! Three boys are all I can take right now!” It does affect the time the couple get to spend together, but that’s all a part of the parenting life. “All relationships are going to have their ups and downs. Children are like kabab mein haddi – you love your child endlessly, but it does happen. The man may feel it more because he loses time with you, but it is a small phase and then you start enjoying it and it becomes three or four of you. Now I don’t even send out messages without signing off Zidaan and Aariz as well. It’s been quite smooth for us!”

Zidaan gets to spend Friday and Saturday night in bed with his parents, and he knows weekdays he’s on his own. His mom concocts creative games that he can play with his cousins on Sundays for their weekly play date. “I don’t encourage a lot of TV, it makes them feel that it’s more important that their mind gets more active than their physical body. If I watch TV, so will he. I have to make sure I’m doing the things I want him to do.” Malaika is all praise for her husband, Zayed, who’s always wanted to be a father. “He doesn’t even need me – he manages just fine, he’s just too, too good as a father. Zidaan and him are perpetually together. They go for movies and bowling, play videogames together, hang out on the iPad, he takes him to the park and sits on the bench and watches him play – that’s his time with him. Whatever time he gets at home, he wants to be with the kids. It’s been damn easy.”

The World According to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

19 Saturday Mar 2011

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Interviews: Cover Stories, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Bollywood, Interview, Interviews: Cinema, Interviews: Travel, Verve Magazine

Published: Verve Magazine, Cover Story, March 2011
Photographs by Mike Ruiz

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s natural precociousness springs up at every twist in the traveller’s tale. Sitanshi Talati-Parikh watches the ex-Miss World-turned-moviestar-and-homemaker switch from child to Inca queen, Bollywood dramatist to casual honeymooner, lost tourist to Disneyworld explorer, through loud giggles, flashing smiles, dramatic enunciations and passionate inflections, exploring a few of her many memorable journeys

A little girl sets sail for the world in an “enormous ship”. The romantic notion of travel becomes a kaleidoscopic reality, possibly even a way of life, with her “shippie” dad and family. It is the mid ’80s when Japan is “very disciplined” and China is yet to come into its own. Around a decade later, winning the Miss World pageant makes her “a cultural ambassador of India” in places unpronounceable. And through it all, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has felt the power of being Indian, of coming from “a world within the world”.

Since then, there have been movie shoots in exotic locales: from a desert full of water bodies in Latin America to remote towns in India, brand endorsements in cobble-stoned Europe, and the world becoming a stage, literally, with performances like the Unforgettable World Tour. “I will go out and experience a place, I won’t live in an ivory tower, while gauging it and being responsible. Ever since Miss World, people have given me a lot of love – whether you call it recognition or adulation, they have always been expressive in their connectivity with me. When they saw me on the streets, it wasn’t like ‘Ay, Aishwarya!’ – women would come forward blessing and embracing me.”

Always politically correct, her carefully polished voice modulating with occasional bursts of enthusiasm, the intrepid traveller sits easy, knowing that the subject of the day is one she can be naturally passionate about. She points out that while the world advanced technologically, becoming a “smaller place”, her life mirrored the advancement: “Everything became from a 14-hour or 18-hour flight to ‘just an overnighter’, because you started doing it so often. Abhishek (Bachchan) and I love flights – we’re psychotic that way.” And, as she inevitably spends an exorbitant amount of time in transit, the covert people watcher admits “feeling a lot for elderly Indian passengers who walk around staring at monitors. Airports can be overwhelming – with the distances, pace, people and security checks; and while they have become second nature to me, I can still relate to how the experience can be for the uninitiated.”

South Africa: “I had a funny feeling inside me – looking outside the airplane window – a sense of going away.”
There are three times that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan recalls feeling this way, with a distinct sense of poignancy. It began with the flight to South Africa as she left to compete for, and win, the Miss World pageant title in 1994. “I suddenly felt that I would be away from everyone and alone for a month. And the thought of being with a whole lot of people foreign to you; but when you get there, you just fit in. I don’t know if it was a premonition or not, but I sensed that life was changing.”

London: “When you land there in winter, you barely wake up from the jetlag and feel that it is dark, like night again.”
In London, where she was to spend a year as the reigning Miss World, she had the option to have her own apartment or to live with a family in their house. “And I, being the responsible one, chose to stay in a house with a very sweet elderly couple rather than alone in an apartment, knowing my family would feel more secure. It’s a very Indian thing.” It was the first time she was living on her own: “For further studies I never went outside of Mumbai, because my father was a marine engineer, and it was just my brother, mum and I living together; I would feel for my mother and didn’t want to leave her and go away.”

Shanghai: “Suddenly Shanghai was an absolutely different city, and the world was beginning to talk about the change in China.”
It was a very different China during her repeat journey in 1994, when she went as a model with Hemant Trevedi. “Shanghai was a symbol of that change – the modernisation and globalisation, like the US on this side of the world. This was a new culture, very much in keeping with the times or ahead of the time. Very interested in India and Indian fashion and it was almost a privilege to be there with our fashion and our designers.”

China: “This time I was shooting a song on the Great Wall doing a little jig!”
In 1994, she had walked up to the fifth gate of the Great Wall, with a “more grown-up taking away, recognising the passion of generations working on building this incredible wonder that we live with on our planet”. She was back on the Great Wall as an actor, shooting the song Poovukkul, which showcased the Seven Wonders of the World, for Shankar’s Jeans. “You never know when you are going to revisit a certain part of the world. As a kid, when I was there in the ’80s, they took us to a uniquely Chinese opera, and sang some of our Hindi songs, with all the Chinese in the audience looking at us because we were the one Indian family sitting there. You’ve heard of people in China and Russia listening to our music, our film songs, and then to think, on my third visit there, I was shooting a song, with a live audience of people fascinated by our cinema and the song culture of our movies.”

Times Square and historic sites: “I am an actor – it means you have to do everything!”
Dancing atop the Great Wall – did it feel ridiculous at all? “Interestingly enough, never,” Aishwarya answers decisively. “From the beginning, I never felt odd. When shooting for Aur Pyar Ho Gaya, I remember Bobby (Deol), even though he belongs to an actor-family, feeling a bit odd when we had to do ridiculous things in public arenas, like jump on a car, or run on the street with a toothbrush in our hand and toothpaste on our face.” Or the time when she was in New York City shooting for Aa Ab Laut Chalein in Times Square wearing a fuschia pink gown with a bow, big earrings and a flower in her hair. “I had no inhibitions. You’ve grown up watching it, song and dance is so much a part of our cinema that you don’t feel silly doing it.”

Disneyland: “We both were like excited kids – free, happy and wonderfully reliving our childhood.”
A youthful exuberance springs up as she recalls memories of the past. “That family trip (’80s) that started with Japan ended with Disneyland, and Abhishek and I ended our honeymoon – after Bora Bora’s ‘drop in the ocean’ experience – in Disneyland. It wasn’t planned, but worked out beautifully into a great circle.”

Tunisia: “In my interviews, when I say ‘Every day I feel like a newcomer, or every day is like the first time’ there are those special moments when I actually feel that, very, very strongly.”
The third time she felt “the pit of the stomach feeling” was when she took off to shoot for “one of the best film experiences”, The Last Legion in Tunisia and Slovakia. “Not only did I have no one from my nationality on the crew, it was a guy flick – everybody was a dude! I was going to be a warrior, this action character. I was feeling it again: going away for a very long period, and I had to step away from very interesting work that was happening here. I had gone through that predicament too many times in my life and career: ‘Heck, all good things happening, do I have to choose?’” Without any idea of the geography of Tunisia, she was bowled over by the spectacular beauty of the country. She arrived three days before the shoot, without rehearsal. “Everyone was in panic mode, but my dancing helped me, I embraced action instantly. Beautiful Mediterranean water, very hot and warm…a bit much in the costumes, with all that armour! The places were so quaint and simple that we all became that much closer as a group.”

Slovakia: “These guys are HUGE. When you sit on these buggers, you don’t walk straight for two days after.”
Slovakia was familiar because she had been to Prague. She found the “cold (weather) and green” country replete with beautiful castles. “We were all like kids. We had so much fun working together, and such incredible discipline – whether it was Colin (Firth) or Sir Ben (Kingsley) – we were like children in a giant videogame.” And the most remarkable experience was spending time on horseback. She emits a loud, expressive laugh: “The horses in Tunisia are one size and then you get to Slovakia and you realise that the horses there are different. These guys are HUGE. When you sit on these buggers, you don’t walk straight for two days after!”

Budapest: “Ajay kept telling Sanjay (Leela Bhansali) that the two things he dreaded the most, dancing and singing, were what Sanjay made him do in the film.”
Budapest was special because Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam was shot there, for which she got her first Best Actress award. She recalls with a smile, the dance sequence with a rather nervous Ajay Devgn. “It was exceptional because it was an insight into their culture – the music and dance sequence was local to the place. So you actually experienced something unique, apart from the magnificence of being by the river and bridge. Also, we saw very few children in the country, and then we realised that they were encouraging people to have more children because of the mortality rate. Apart from the cuisines, it is always interesting to come away with an insight into the place. For me, it is not about hitting the shops; it is about getting to know a place.”

Brazil: “I was reliving my college days, being vicariously part of a gang of childhood friends.”
After Columbia during her Miss World reign, she was back in South America much later, when shooting for Dhoom 2. “The genre of the film we were working on made us relive our college days. I was privy to a close unit of kids (Abhishek, ‘Duggu’ Hrithik Roshan and Uday Chopra) who are childhood friends, and felt that I was vicariously part of the gang. Brazil offers that kind of spirit, the film gave that kind of energy.” Her eyes take on a faraway look as she recalls a surreal moment towards the end of the Dhoom 2 shooting schedule. They lay sprawled below the “magnificent” Christo, in the wee hours of the morning, before Hrithik Roshan was returning to his son being born. “We were in that woozy state of mind, because we had stayed awake the previous day and night and were watching the sun rise. It was a very quiet time, the early morning hour before the tourists arrived. We had had such a noisy schedule, all of us buzzing throughout, that it was the best silence we all shared. As we lay on the ground, we felt that Christ was looking at us from the skies. You hear terms like, ‘listening to the sound of silence’, but we experienced it then.”

Machu Picchu: “In my little bling feathered costume, I looked like one of the Inca queens.”
Shankar’s Robot took her once again to “the other side of the world”. She had taken a break from her career for the first time in her life. “I was facing the camera after an unexpected eight months all the way in Machu Picchu (Peru).” It was the longest journey they had made – counting the kind of flights, number of flights and locations. Upon reaching the place, a tiny township, after a train journey, they all walked from the railway station dragging their bags on the road. “As we trekked along, we suddenly passed a marketplace. My staff was exhausted, but I was thinking, ‘What an adventure!’ I love walking, because we don’t do that enough, and you actually get to feel the pulse of the place, get in contact with the people and culture, otherwise it could well be structure to car, car to airport, airport to plane, plane to car, car to hotel.”

Mexico City airport: “I was the pride of India and all that – and I didn’t have my passport. This was the worst moment for me.”
With her valet in tow, and running a fever, Aishwarya was connecting via Mexico City en route to Melbourne, Australia, representing India in a performance at the Commonwealth Games. Special Services, who had come to help them with the language barrier, disappeared with their passports. “It was bizarre. People there would smile a lot and look blank, because they didn’t speak the language.” She was taken to a private room that was empty save for two people who could be guards eating a home-cooked meal. “It was like the movies – being in a prison cell and these guys going at their meat sauce and bread. They would say something to each other and keep smiling at me. My valet has piercing eyes, so I would keep telling him to smile and keep his face easy. I suddenly felt I had to be protective and get us out of here. I had never felt that before. I wasn’t getting through on the phone to anyone and at one point I felt myself go a bit cold. I had wanted to visit Mexico, but this was not the adventure I was looking for!” After an encounter with a man who spoke perfectly-accented English and suddenly refused to speak any, to a bunch of “strong-looking women” who used the word “off-loaded”, Aishwarya nearly gave up. And then suddenly, in the crowd she spied the person who had disappeared with their passports and chased him down. “He was carrying our passports in his hand, and till date I have no idea why.”

Los Angeles: “With time, travel, age and experiences, you begin to like the easier, more social pace of LA.”
After boarding the flight from an eventful Mexico City, she was transiting through LA to catch her Melbourne connection, hoping to make it in time to perform. “I reached LA and suddenly life was beyond fabulous. It was the one time I cherished being who I am, in terms of the celebrity life. Suddenly, it was beyond comfort, think all superlatives. I always say that once in a while, if it gets too comfortable, God just does a little schickt (demonstrates a click with her fingers like playing carom). He’s watching his own little rom-com, thinking, ‘I want to have fun with you’. So I think, ‘Enjoy it, and turn it when you want to.’”

New Zealand: “The life that we lead, we are like gypsies, nomads, and I’m very quick to feel at home in any place in the world.”
She’s spoken a marathon, and yet looks like she can go on. I’m right; this would make a coffee-table book. “We don’t realise how quickly time flies and because a part of our life gets captured on celluloid forever, I feel as actors we live lifetimes within our lifetime.” She is off to join Abhishek in time for his birthday, in New Zealand where he is shooting, in a place she has never been before. Some people are meant to be children of the world, explorers in their own right. “And yet, when one travels so much, there will always be something unique to being home. It is your family that makes home what it is – it’s not the physical structure even if you say bed and all of that. I live a very homely life in the places that I go to. Besides, as Abhishek rightly puts it, one in six is an Indian: you can go to the farthest of places and we (Indians) will be there, saying, ‘Hello, you want home-cooked food?’ That’s the best part about Indians – they are there to feed you. You are at home anywhere in the world.”

Whom Women Want: Imran Khan cover story

13 Saturday Nov 2010

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Interviews: Cover Stories, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Avantika Malik, Bollywood, I Hate Luv Storys, imrankhan, indiancinema, Kidnap, Luck, Nuzhat Khan, vervemagazine

Published: Verve Magazine, Verve Man Supplement, Cover Story, October 2010
Photographs: Joy Datta

He’s the hot cake of the film industry, has a thriving gay fan following and is quite the favourite with the ladies. This is Imran Khan after he’s delivered his second big hit, I Hate Luv Storys and has a movie lined up with nearly every top actress in the industry: a big notch up from his overnight debut success. While Verve’s camera captures a day in the life of the movie star, Sitanshi Talati-Parikh looks beyond his distracting good looks to discover what makes him tick and makes him the coolest catch in town

“I’ve wanted him to be a man women would like,” is how Nuzhat Khan begins the conversation about her only child. Even the toughest detractors and hardest cynics would find it impossible to dislike 27-year-old Imran Khan, who admits to have consciously imbibed the best aspects of favourite characters from classic books, movies and comics. So, in a sense, the elusive, romantic notion of the man that women chase from fiction is actively present in Imran’s personality. Does that make him perfect? “It’s a work-in-progress,” he grins. In Nuzhat’s ideal lies a fundamental difference that sets Imran apart – while others stop at being good according to their own definition, Imran without self-deprecating, without martyring himself, goes the extra mile to be universally likeable.

This precocious child started speaking long, coherent sentences at a very early age – and in Nuzhat’s words, “He was a complete person even as a child, never requiring disciplining – I could talk to him like a grown-up.” It doesn’t appear to be a statement stemming from a maternal fondness, because she has always attempted to look at Imran as an unrelated person, without bias. “I would hate for him to have grown up thinking he’s special because his mother thinks so – it should be because he believes it.” And that is what makes Imran self-assured. “I don’t think I’ve ever had issues with self-doubt. What I can’t change, I don’t let it influence or affect me. Even if it may seem unnatural for a teenager to be so, I have always been a kind of calm, reasonable, logical person – prided myself on being mature. It is something I consciously hold onto, that I’ve never wanted to lose. I always wanted to be the guy who can handle a situation.” And he can do that, MacGuyver-style, in any condition, under any circumstance.

This what his fiancée, Avantika Malik, in her light, lilting voice, lists as one of the traits that makes him the man she has known to love for eight years and counting, from the age of 19. She finds that through career choices veering from wanting to remain behind-the-scenes as a director, to embracing the limelight as a hero, nothing has changed in the boy she dated and the man she is soon to be married to. “The great thing about Imran is that at his very core, he remains completely the same, grounded and real, though it’s true that he carries himself with more ease and with greater confidence now than ever before.” Avantika admits that her respect for him also stems from the vital fact that he has never given her any reason to doubt his intentions, always being honest and forthcoming about his feelings. She quotes her mother, Vandana Malik, here, who describes Imran as, ‘one of very few God’s good people.’

What makes Imran refreshingly undiabetic, though, is his well-controlled moodiness – evidenced by his need for alone time – his sharp wit, often sardonic and dry, and his toe-the-line principles. You can’t cross boundaries he’s drawn because doing so endangers the very nature of that relationship and his tolerance towards you. But if you work within these limits, you can find in him a genuine friend – warming your grey cells against his razor-sharp repartees. Sonam Kapoor, his co-star in I Hate Luv Storys, marks “his humility and hunger for knowledge, but most of all his quirky sense of humour” as appealing, and Deepika Padukone, with whom he has the upcoming romantic dramedy Break Ke Baad, finds him a fun, supportive co-star, calling him, ‘Mr-Know-It-All.’ “Imran likes to know everything about everything and if there’s ever a time that he doesn’t, he will immediately read up or Google it.” Also known as ‘Imikepdia’ among his friends, intelligence in liberal doses is something Imran prides himself in having: “My dad (Anil Pal, IT professional in Sunnyvale, California) – after all, mera baap hai – knows more about everything than I can ever know. Currently it’s uncool to know stuff, but I have always considered it to be a good thing to be knowledgeable.”

That knowledge extends to supporting causes he believes in, whether it is attempting to create a greener world – he contributed an essay on being environmentally-friendly for Verve last year – to standing up for one’s democratic rights like voting or finding a shelter for homeless animals. With his personal brand of humour and wit, he uses his columns and public forums to inspire people into action – fighting religious myopia and mediocrity, for instance. And he walks the talk: ensuring that his house is environmentally friendly, adopting stray animals and taking criticism positively to ensure achieving his own potential. It works for him, after all, women haven’t given up on idealism: Saan, co-moderator of his unofficial fan site (www.imran-khan.org) is rather taken in by his principles: “I find his honest dedication to good causes and his belief in human beings very hot.”

Sex-appeal? With Imran it’s never about the superficial stuff. “Good looks are not it. People are sweet and well behaved. But for my family, we lay a great deal of importance on integrity. It means different things for different people, but he doesn’t let go of that principle,” says Nuzhat. Imran accurately assesses that people gravitate towards his personality. “People like me when they meet me. I am an amiable, easy-going person. I like people and that translates well. Rakes work for younger women – say until the age of 25-26. I’ve always been the good guy, and up until a certain time I had absolutely no success with women…and suddenly everyone starts coming forward with, ‘You’re such a great guy!’ and I’m thinking, ‘Where were you 10 years ago?’” While his contemporaries play the field as cavalier Wickhams and Willoughbys, Imran remains the quintessential dependable Darcy. As Shaima, the founder of his fan site observes, “What I love about him is that he may be your typical heartthrob, but he isn’t a heart-breaker.” The fact that he has been in a committed relationship for longer than even he can remember may have something to do with it, but as Imran points out, he is quite the unlikely candidate to be “having short-lived affairs with aspiring actresses and models.”

There is a sense of vulnerability about the boy-man that is carefully concealed. I noticed it when I inadvertently came across him eating a boxful of chocolate bars, trying to calm his nerves before going in front of a live audience, over a year ago. You get barely a moment to notice it, before it flickers away. The face is always composed, the voice is always modulated and the feathers are impeccably unruffled. He is never reactionary: his sensitive personality is reined in by his logic-driven outlook. “My motivations are emotional, but my actions are rational. Both take place simultaneously. I’m not a shoulder people cry on; I am the guy who gives advice. Emotionally I am not great – I’m a fairly emotionally reserved person. People bring me things to fix, I’m a mechanic.”

And where reason is important, experimentation isn’t a part of who Imran is – he doesn’t choose to tread dangerous waters unless it will take him to the next step in his calculated climb to the top. Despite the fact that the prudence of his choices were questioned when he faced flak for films Kidnap and Luck, Imran makes every decision after great deliberation – he rarely, if ever, backtracks on that choice. He is quick to rectify errors, learn from the past and lay the foundation for the future, all the while maintaining a stoic demeanour about the present. For instance, his earlier bluntness – stemming from the inability to see the ramifications of brute candour – has now been prudently replaced by tactful replies, truthfulness coated with a barely perceptible paint of diplomacy. You would believe him to have a mental check-list, of the kind of movies he wishes to do, about the people he wants to work with, about the path his life should take, and find him actively fitting pieces of the puzzle to make it all fall into place.

The culmination of being inherently good, irrefutably smart, and irreverently humourous makes him a person you’d want to know despite his potential of being a big movie star. Imran is very clear about stardom: “You have to be a bankable star – to justify the money. You wear different hats. Being treated with deference can get irritating, because it can get too much; but not being treated with deference, bothers you too. I wear no hats in real life.” Twenty months ago, Imran prided himself on being the guy next door, who could roam around town ‘practically invisible’. Today, after the aggressive promos and resounding success of I Hate Luv Storys, he finds himself the reluctant star – unable to do so anymore. While he believes in positive fan interaction, he’s withdrawn from the popular social networking tool, Twitter, to ensure meaningful conversations over general mass following. Few can be actors before they are stars, few can uphold the integrity of their work over the drug of adulation and you believe he is one who can, possibly insulated by his rootedness. Nuzhat, with sudden maternal candour admits, “Yes, I worry that his goodness can suffer at the hands of the movie industry, but more so, I hope Imran never becomes content with mere success, but pushes the limits towards better and more meaningful work. And I don’t mean that for movies alone – but for it to extend to every part of his life.”

Post the success of his first film and the lack-lustre performance of two soon after, he wasn’t noticeably insecure, but definitely eager to prove himself once again. He took the beating in his stride, with the same equanimity with which he handled his overnight rise to fame. Today, there is a sense of retribution inflected in his tone – his choice of words denote an obviously confident person, who is merely reflecting the assurance that repeat success brings. While he doesn’t believe in destiny and can’t predict the future, he is secure: in the knowledge that he has everything that he would need to make his world go around – career back on rails, the power to pick and choose from the best of the industry lined up at his door, the girl, the family, and complete faith in himself. Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface famously said, ‘First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman.’ Imran may have got it all in the wrong order, but for all the right reasons, he’s hot, he’s wanted and it looks very much like he’s here to stay.

Imran Notes
“Being the only child, I had more one-on-one time with my parents and time to introspect. I can’t deal with loud noise – like TV. I need regular periods of silence and quiet.”

“Who knows what makes you sexy? I think my personality works for me – people like me when they meet me. I am an amiable, easy-going person.

Imran owns a rare edition of his favourite comic book, batman, a Batman tie and believes that were he to have a superpower, it would be MacGyvering. He’s a Star Wars fan and considered being an archaeologist post an Indiana-Jones phase.

Imran Style Guide
He’s been known for his quirky tees, comfort-fit denims and one-of-a-kind sneakers. The ones he is wearing at the Verve shoot are hand-painted Beatles Nike keds sourced by Avantika from LA. Lately, inspired by old movies and the Rat Pack’s sharp “badass” attire, he has decided he wants more from the way he dresses. He’s decided to “bring back the suit by taking that style of dressing and turning it over on its head. It’s not about what you do. You wear it, don’t let it wear you.” To drive the point home, he quotes Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock, who when asked why he’s wearing a tuxedo at work, snaps back, ‘It’s after seven, what am I, a farmer?’

Abhay Deol: An Uncommon Man

19 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Abhay Deol, Aisha, Bollywood, devd, indiancinema, Interview, movies, vervemagazine

Published: Verve Magazine, March 2010
Photographs: Harsh Man Rai and Tina Dehal

You may choose to like or dislike his choices, but you can’t ignore him. A string (think ten) of unusual movies later, Abhay Deol, who turns 34 this month, has found sure footing in Hindi cinema with unexpected acceptance from the audience and grudging respect from the industry. He inspires deeply opposing reactions, but that doesn’t bother him in the least. Sitanshi Talati-Parikh discovers the man behind the actor

I had a premonition about that Saturday, but I didn’t anticipate that meeting the hottest Deol in town would involve a star-crossed sequence of errors. Lost in Aram Nagar Colony, in the innards of distant Versova, trying to navigate around bungalows that had no order or system, unable to get the girl answering the phone to give me usable directions, I reached harried – unforgivably – three minutes late, only to find him busy in a conference with director Navdeep Singh for his first home production, Basra.

Apparently, while trying to get his own production house rolling, he’d forgotten about our interview. Looking rather bemused, he started talking rapidly…for nine minutes, and then requested a five-minute time-out while he finished some critical Basra-related work. Meanwhile, I tapped my nails on the wooden table, back firmly facing the curious eyes in the production house, checking out posters of Dharmendra’s films that populated the walls and watched the minutes become the better part of an hour confirming that I would miss my friend’s wedding in the bargain. After being at the receiving end of a couple of sardonic comments about time and responding with rather genuine profuse apologies (yes, I believe him), he emerged to give me a full, uninterrupted 40 minutes of quality time. Am I surprised that at the end of it all it was a great interview?

Of course, the dark clouds that loomed hadn’t begun to pour yet. I got back home only to discover to my intense horror that only the first nine minutes had saved on my voice recorder – all else had, by some inexplicable black magic, vanished. The curious dead cat had got my tongue and made me roast in hell. Munching vigorously on humble pie, I returned to the now-familiar Aram Nagar Colony a few tense days later on another professional rendezvous with the refreshingly easy-going actor-turned-producer. This time around, he didn’t keep me waiting and my recorder behaved itself. We ate some bitter chocolate to thaw the ice in the air.

Curiosity killed the proverbial cat and made Abhay Deol famous. It took a while, but now everyone wants a piece of this man who doesn’t fail to arouse interest. He’s not a misfit in the sense that he’s an abnormality; au contraire, when you meet him, he’s pleasantly normal. It’s his choices that have made for fevered coffee-table speculation, and the fact that you always wonder what new oddity this unconventional Deol will roll out. He’s been called that so many times, it’s almost a cliché. Maybe that’s why the lanky actor, who always prefers to keep a surprise up his rather hairy arm, has chosen to do a movie that seems so incredibly mainstream. The upcoming Aisha, loosely based on Jane Austen’s Emma, co-starring Sonam Kapoor and produced by Anil Kapoor, is worth watching, if only to understand why someone like Deol would star in it. A perfectly normal romance, there is no angst, no odd-ball character, no debauchery; nothing really that makes it something he would ideally gravitate towards.

It makes you suspicious, wondering if all along, these strange choices – a superhuman character in Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd (2007), a lovable thief in Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye (2008), a contemporary Devdas in Dev.D (2009), a failed writer and middle-class government engineer caught in a web of deceit in noir film Manorama Six Feet Under (2007) – were all an act, until he found a director and producer willing to cast him into the ‘safe’ and common mould. Deol looks unabashed, as if you would be ridiculous to question his choices, firmly crediting script over banner, any day. His other release this year, Dev Benegal’s Road, Movie (an Indo-American production which has already got rave reviews on the international circuit) about the experiences of a guy driving his truck through a desert, makes this statement a fact. Deol happens to be a part of Road, Movie merely because Benegal was willing to wait to accommodate the former’s busy schedule – it is a twist in the actor’s fateful tale. Now, where Deol goes, the banners and author-backed roles follow.

Dharmendra’s nephew has had to live with being told, rather matter-of-factly, that his movies don’t stand a chance. But patience, grim determination and a slow pace of success later, when people started to (albeit grudgingly) accept him as a bankable star and the industry began looking up to him as a leader in experimentation, you find that Deol can’t help but be a little smug. Success breeds confidence, and he admits that being on the other side of the bargaining table, seeing the way the chips have fallen has given him the right to be self-assured – to talk with the knowledge that people are itching to hear him (he was a speaker at the prestigious TEDIndia – Technology, Entertainment, Design – international conference last year); and to walk with a sense of renewed purpose. And a part of that purpose is being a catalyst for change. “You need to take the few early steps – paving the road for others to drive upon. And more importantly, I have to do things that appeal to me as an artiste/ actor, that’s where the honesty will come from. The audience will follow – after all, people always gravitate towards those who are sure of themselves, and those who do things with integrity.”

While he may claim an avid fan following, there are those who have not seen his films, and therefore have not really come to recognise him as an actor of repute. Road, Movie, for instance, is a film that he admits can go either way with the audience. “It is a step in an unexplored direction and I don’t know how people will react – the foreign audiences have really appreciated it, but will it be a film that appeals universally? I don’t know. With a good release, though, it stands a chance.” At the same time, he is not comfortable with the idea that his films – and therefore he – may appeal to a niche, intellectual audience. “I have never looked upon an audience – particularly the Indian audience – as being dumb or looking for escapism. I consider my audience to be smarter than I am. If I didn’t, I would be taking my audience for granted. Whether realistic or not, it keeps me on my toes, and raises the bar for me personally.”

Talking about being realistic, you can’t see this Deol raging on screen, warding off goons and doing a merry jig around trees (though Honeymoon… proved that the boy has magic in his tangoing feet). Subtlety, not melodrama is his artistic choice. Where at one time, cousin Sunny Deol’s angry histrionics may have held the day, today, the multiplex audience is more forgiving towards actors who believe in the power of nuanced performances. In real life Abhay Deol is a casual and prolific talker, but his on-screen characters tend to emote with expressions rather than voice: minor inflections are expressively reflected on camera. “I prefer to use facial expressions when I am acting. There are actors who will want more dialogues simply so that they can have longer screen time. I tend to cut my own dialogues – if something can be said in one line, why do you need five? Our face and expressions are magnified on the big screen, so less is always more.”

‘Beta engineer banega’ is what most Indian parents would think and that’s exactly what Deol’s parents hoped for. Growing up in the same house as legendary star Dharmendra and his sons Sunny and Bobby Deol, the younger Deol came into his own on stage in Jamnabai Narsee School, as early as age five, but remained ambivalent about his future as an actor. “My family wanted me to do whatever I wanted and give it my 100 per cent, though they would have liked it if I became a doctor or a scientist. Growing up in the ’80s, it was like that. The kids in school would make fun of me, because I came from a family of actors. When people around me proclaimed, ‘He’ll be a good actor,’ I would find it deeply offensive, thinking, ‘How do you know that; how do you know I may not have other interests?’ I hid the fact that I wanted to act. I used to be good at drawing…I thought I would take up graphic design.” It seems that for longer than should be necessary, Deol has been fighting being moulded according to people’s expectations, even if those expectations were a part of his own dream.

What the kid that refused to conform actually did was study theatre in Los Angeles, USA, and contrary to expectations, it wasn’t an easy road into movies. “Initially, I wanted to work with everybody, to do that commercial film so that I would get the money to do a non-commercial film. I hate those labels – ‘commercial’, ‘non-commercial’. But it conveys the message. Nobody wanted to take a chance on me because I was a flop actor. And, before Socha Na Tha (2005, Deol’s debut film directed by Imtiaz Ali), there was no interest in me either.” Despite dogged determination and a good show of bravado, Deol’s chosen path came with its own share of insecurities. “You want to navigate the system, you need support. You don’t want to end up as someone on the periphery. I decided then that whether hit or miss, I would let my work and its consistency speak for itself. You can only be insecure if you have something to hide or if you doubt yourself. I’m pretty truthful and honest, so my insecurities kept going out of the door. Those that remained were about my career as a whole, because it is a bigger entity.”

Forbidden Films (it’s hard to miss the defiant air in the choice of name) is a production house that he started after the painful realisation that many of his films failed because of bad marketing. “There has been a struggle working with first-time producers and smaller film-makers – it’s difficult because even while making the film, money runs out. And when it comes to releasing the film, there’s no money left for marketing. Then, the producer lacks the clout to distribute it well. That works against a good product and it kept happening to me. For instance, Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye and Dev.D, backed by UTV, fared better than Shemaroo which didn’t manage to successfully market Manorama Six Feet Under. These are lessons I have learnt.” He believes that none of the Indian film producers – whatever they may claim – really know how to market a film internationally. And therein lies a huge untapped audience. “Starting my own production house was merely to give films, directors and stories that I believe in a chance to survive. I don’t plan to star in all the films I produce – but I am acting in the first one, Basra. Production is a lot of work, and being new to it, it’s a learning process.” And this coming after shooting three films back-to-back (Oye Lucky…, Dev.D, Road, Movie), which got this avid traveller (who prefers luxurious European jaunts to backpacking trips) so burnt out that he had to take a few therapeutic months off to do a welding and metal-work course in New York.

He has chosen wisely to not be bothered by what others think or how they define him, particularly by the recent incident reported about him being at loggerheads with the Aisha producers on being dissatisfied with his role. “Almost everything that is reported is a?rumour or not true, though I’m not saying everything is false. I’m private about my life…and there are times when I say what comes to my mind, in a particularly casual fashion, which gives my words the leeway to be twisted.” With a sheepish grin he remarks, “And sarcasm doesn’t work really well with the media.” Like others before him, Deol has fallen prey to people’s opinions based on the quirky characters he has played, his oddball choices and industry buzz. “I do feel that I am misunderstood as a person. There are things I have heard about myself…it all comes back to you. People think that the stars don’t know, but they know about these rumours. You are in the public eye, working with different people, a lot of times you could be the one being difficult and it’s there for all to see, and other times you could be justified in what you say, but people will still feel that you are being difficult, because of all that’s perceived of you and because you are in such a position of power.”

Or the times when there are determined probes into this highly eligible bachelor’s love life. With no real face to attach to the girl(s) on his arm, Deol inconveniently finds himself linked up to anybody he works with or has been seen talking to. Professional hazard it may be, but he’s often in the incongruous state of being too honest and too private all at once. “Once while in New York, I made the mistake of saying, ‘I’m dating a few girls, it’s not like I don’t have a social life,’ and that got blown totally out of context! In New York it is natural to date casually; while in India I naturally tend to get more protective, I don’t want to have to answer to anybody…questions like: ‘How did you meet, how’s it going, are you serious, are you getting married?’ I mean, who are you to ask me that? Why should I answer? And tomorrow if the two of us are not together, they will write about what might have gone wrong. Sometimes your personal life takes a beating when your professional life starts to go down; then they judge you, and judge your partner for leaving you.”

And so the ‘ladies’ man’ tag has found itself surely attached to his broad shoulders. His voice escalates in volume just enough to suggest that this is a touchy topic (no pun intended). “If you call me a ladies’ man, then, on one level yes, there’s nothing wrong with flirting. I like the opposite sex, I always go out of my way to charm someone and talk to someone; but at the same time, I’m not one to sleep around! I’m not looking to settle down right now, but I’m also not someone who will sleep with anything in a skirt! For me, more than a relationship, companionship is very important. In our day and age, it is much harder to be in a committed relationship for very long.” Experience talks, having battled work pressures simultaneously with relationships, leading him to conclude that it’s one or the other at this stage in his life. “Right now, I’ve barely got my foot in the door – I’m not even settled in right now. So I’ve had two successes behind me, big deal! Two more flops and I will be in the same position I was in two years ago. It’s not like I have cemented myself in this industry – that won’t happen for a very long time – but at least for the next couple of years I need to put in the energy and get close to having, if not my toe, then perhaps, half my body in the door. Then I’ll be happy and take a break. I understand that it is important for me to have a life outside of work….”

He may be playing the field, but he isn’t riding the high horse of fame to charm a girl. Meeting him, you understand he doesn’t need to. He’s not anything like the dark heroes he plays; he’s not the Dev folly. “I am a positive person, happy in my personal life, and I’m not very competitive. I tend to gravitate towards those girls that don’t give me any extra attention just because I’m famous. For example, there was one who wasn’t very polite to me because she assumed that I would have star-like airs, but over the course of a few meetings, she opened up to me, when she realised that I’m just a normal guy. And immediately, I was attracted to her because she valued the right things. Of course, there is a lot of attention because you are famous….”

One would imagine that living with a handful of movie-star Deols would have got him used to fame. “It’s true, I’ve grown up with that and I’m wise to it. I think that’s why I did my own thing when I started out. The fame bit is important to me simply because it helps me get the money to make the movies I want to make. Beyond that, it doesn’t define who I am. And I won’t ever let that happen. It’s not about getting the launch or a platform or a silver spoon up your butt or whatever; it’s really not being taken in by fame and glamour, because once you get taken in, it comes and it goes, it is not permanent. The only thing permanent that you have is the work you have left behind.”

Maybe we are quick to judge people who are not of the common grain. Someone who has chosen – more accurately written – his own path, who one would imagine to be opinionated and as stubborn as a mule, is actually quite reasonable about his opinions. “One of my philosophies is that I know that I don’t know. I’m entitled to my opinions, but am not rigid about them to the extent that you can’t convince me otherwise. You have to accept that you can make mistakes; sometimes you can become so subjective that the objectivity is gone. I need someone to turn around and give me a slap across my face! I respect that, as long as it is justified.”

And being open to other people’s opinions is having respect for individuality. This gets him steaming. “We are constantly told, don’t do this, do that instead. It is crazy. I totally believe if you have faith in your artist, if he/she has already delivered, give them a chance. The one thing we lack in our industry is individuality. Which is why all the films, actors, actresses look the same! Because they are all aiming for the same thing – who can dance better, who can fight better. That is why we have more flops than hits. It still baffles me how people see formula and depend so much on it. There is a formula, for sure there is. But the ones who break tradition, get famous.”

He finally leans back – barely having paused for a breath – and you feel like you have travelled the long, rough road to the beginning of success with him. Only you haven’t. “I’m happy, but just because you are happy doesn’t mean you stop. You can be greedy and want more.” There is a deep throaty chuckle, Kevin Spacey-like dimples flashing, reminding you that despite having reason to, he doesn’t smile enough. “I want to go the distance in making a movie that has universal appeal. I want to communicate to the world, not just to India and Indians. It’s not just about boy meets girl, it’s not just about comedy; there’s also global warming, genocide, political assassinations, social workers, adoption….”

It’s also about microcosms that have macrocosmic appeal. “While I’m a Mumbai kid, I understand village mentality because my family is essentially from the Pind, in Punjab. I’ve been brought up with a certain set of traditional values and culture, and I want to have my own take on Indian culture. There’s a huge gap…and film is the medium you can bridge it with!” Lucky Singh (Oye Lucky…) and Dev (Dev.D) were two such curious characters rooted in North India, with a nation-wide appeal. “With Dev.D I knew I could take a classic novel, which even my grandfather knows, contemporise it, and have it appeal to a 16-year-old today. It’s the same thing that Sarat Chandra Chatterjee was trying to say in 1917, that kids today are trying to tell their parents. Why are they rebelling? Why are they obsessing? While Chatterjee didn’t like his own work, and I cannot identify with Devdas, it does have universal appeal.”

With the same angst of a person struggling to find his rightful place in the world and triumphing in the end, he is more like Satyaveer Randhawa in Manorama… than any of the characters he’s played. Yet, he gravitates towards all his roles, albeit unconsciously, because they share a common strain – a debauched spirit that masks a principled person. The principles can shift from determination to fixation with a thought, the debauchery can be rakishness or trivialisation of a socially accepted moral code – but they entwine into the personality of a person who simply goes with what he believes is right.

This is what makes his characters likeable despite their flaws, and this is what makes Deol interesting. Lucky Singh’s sincere eyes belie his actions, the deeply dimpled smile is innocently impish – and you feel that there is a possibility of redemption – in fact it should be no other way. Taller than you’d imagine at six-feet-and-one-inch, and skinnier than you’d expect, clad in pale blue denim and a casual tee, the Darcy-like personality leaves you with the same impression. “Is he as hot in real life?” asks a friend. He may not be your average candyfloss poster boy, but you would be foolish to ignore him. Self-assured, flippant and with an unintentional air of cavalier disarray, the actor is a ‘project’ – someone a girl would automatically get attracted towards, to ‘fix’. And that is just dangerous territory, because as defined by his sometimes wayward, often laid-back attitude, Deol is essentially a free spirit. Dressed (defiantly?) casual at a glittering fashion soirée, he is equally at ease being his own companion, as he is exchanging pleasantries with the best looking girl there. He can be perfectly charming, should he choose to do so and that would be within the constraints of what he defines to be a laid-back friendship or relationship. He would revolt against shackles of any kind, expectations, demands and a desire to be moulded into someone who conforms. And yet, he believes, “commitment-phobic” is not the appropriate term for him. “It’s just that I am not at that place right now,” he explains earnestly. This Deol isn’t misunderstood; he’s just waiting to be understood. At the right time and place in his life.

Baz Luhrmann: Amplifying Emotion

19 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Cinema, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Australia, Baz Luhrmann, Hollywood, India, Interview, movies, vervemagazine

Published: Verve Magazine, International Edge, March 2010
Photographs: Aparna Jayakumar

Award-winning Australian director of films Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet and Australia, Baz Luhrmann arrived in India expecting a “creative adventure”. In the midst of dipping his fingers into paint, warding off curious eyes, responding to over-enthusiastic banter and driving a bike through Rajasthan taking photos, Sitanshi Talati-Parikh gets an insight into his artistic mantra

An elderly Indian gentleman (probably inebriated) asks Baz Luhrmann at a recent art soirée, about the size of his pants. Luhrmann replies politely and retreats to probably punch the wall or take a deep breath. He has, in the correct manner of famous people especially of international origin, been generously accosted. His voice is scratchy from replying to the same – or inane – questions, his face is showing more lines than it should from smiling politely to profusely talking strangers, and he is undeniably tired. It is not surprising then, that he chooses a late start, armed with coffee, the morning of our meeting. “Not all of it is joy,” the veteran director admits, “Some of it is overwhelming. But something keeps telling me to ‘surrender’ and be in the moment.” An agreeable disposition and genial self-deprecating humour on his surprisingly slight frame make him a very real person who likes making larger-than-life movies that tend to hit the spot.

It is a creative visionary’s brush that picks up on the nuances of life, emotions and true-to-life characters with a flourish to create the ‘big’ film – full of flavour, drama, vibrant colours and melody – whether it is the garish realism of Romeo + Juliet (1996), the Parisian kitsch of Moulin Rouge! (2001), or the ochre-hued drama of Australia (2008). “It is amplification. You take realistic human emotions, realities or problems but you use an expressionistic canvas.” And this is what led to what is popularly known as Luhrmann’s Red Curtain Trilogy (Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!) – the concept of an “overtly theatrical musical work”.

Australia announced a departure from Sydney-born Luhrmann’s previous musical format and moved towards a more sweeping epic form. “There is no way that Australia is of the then-current naturalistic vernacular. It is heightened, much like Gone With The Wind is heightened. Instead of music, I tried using landscape to amplify emotion. It is operatic in that sense. Naturalism is like looking through a keyhole and you are apparently looking at reality; but this form is where words fail us – sometimes we just can’t express in words what it is like to truly be exalted or truly be in love or truly lose your child over a cliff.” Instantly, in the mind’s eye appears the stunning visual of the herd of cattle racing towards the brink of a cliff pounding a dust storm. “What may seem to us to be a small event, to a person in the village, it is operatic at that point of time. ‘You-can’t-marry-that-boy-moment’ internally feels like Tosca. As an artist you want to use devices to help the audience empathise. And that doesn’t mean just reproducing the way it apparently is. I try not to show the way things are, rather the way things would have felt for the character.”

The once-aspiring actor has often given credit to Hindi cinema for influencing his cinema. “India has always been an extraordinary serum for my soul. Fifteen years ago – it is quite serendipitous – I made a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1993) set in colonial India. I was really fascinated by the connection between the Elizabethan spiritual world and the Hindu spiritual world. The production is very distinctly making those visual translations in the time of the Raj – the lovers are all European Raj characters and the Hindu spiritual world plays with them.” It went on to be a hugely successful show, winning the Critic’s Prize at the Edinburgh Festival. He recalls the defining moment being his visit to India at the time, with his award-winning production-designer wife, Catherine Martin, where in Rajasthan, they saw their very first Bollywood movie. Unable to remember the title or the cast – except that it was about two brothers going to Oxford University, and fighting over the same girl – Luhrmann found it remarkable that there was, “intense tragedy, next to very broad comedy and then a burst of song. Two thousand people were spellbound, including us who couldn’t speak the language, for three hours. What we got out of that was the value of exaltation. In that sense Bollywood films are Shakespearean. Different people can have different experiences at different levels. That sensibility became the Red Curtain Trilogy and has stayed with me ever since.”

Characters and sensitivity to their emotions is a trait that can be traced back to his youth working at a gas station observing people. At 47, he admits, “I’m addicted to people. And, it’s shocking, but I’m just getting started. I haven’t begun to meet all the people and haven’t begun to make all the movies. Maybe one day I’ll make a really good film, won’t that be good?!” There’s a light chuckle. “People are derided for it…being enthusiastic is uncool, so I would think, be as uncool as you possibly can. There is nothing sadder than getting to a certain age and sleepwalking through life, marking time until the curtain falls. I don’t want to surround myself with that energy.”

His own vigour (despite the weariness) is paramount, and you would expect him to have enthralled us with more work than he has. He has a bunch of projects lined up, including that of a cinematic production of The Great Gatsby. “There is no such thing for me as lying on a beach and saying, ‘The cocktail’s good!’ Creativity has always instinctively been for me the pursuit of a rich and extraordinary life, out of which creativity grows, as opposed to the pursuit of a successful career. I did that, and all of the Red Curtain came out of the instinctive urge. It has to be personal to begin with. For instance, I love Paris and Bohemia, hence Moulin Rouge!” The first Harry Potter film was offered to him: recalling that, he mutters, ‘Idiot!’ and smacks his forehead in mock disapproval at missing out. “That might have been a brilliant career choice once, but the work I do comes out of my life’s journey. Recently, I lost sight of that. So between films I’m doing things just like this.”

And this is exactly where we are. At the newly-opened Le Sutra art concept hotel, Bandra, Mumbai, that has a mural painted by Luhrmann and Australian artist Vincent Fantauzzo. Appalled by the recent negativity in Australia that he’s afraid will mar the formative years of Indian students, Luhrmann decided to partake of this “creative adventure” to use the artistic medium to speak out in a way that politicians cannot. “It is a genuine leading experiential artwork, what we used to call in the old days, ‘a happening’ and a platform to express the positivity to counter the negativity. As old as India is, it is young again. It is youthful, it’s finding new creativity – Australia connects with India on that level. Without getting too clever or complicated, it was adventurous for us, but also symbolically and creatively a positive gesture. So far it has been intense, and it hasn’t let us down.”

Whether it is playing himself on an American TV show, directing a ballet, painting a wall or making a film, Luhrmann has never been judgemental about ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. “It is just expression…the adventure in pursuing it and the personal gain in your internal journey. What does it do for you?” While painting the mural – quipping that he merely held the can of paint – he finds that he has, “received the invisible lesson – one that you don’t know where to look for.” Accustomed to a zillion people following his directives, he suddenly found himself floundering with the language barrier, helping young children paint the embroidery on the mural. “There aren’t 15 people here to say ‘Yes Boss!’ I was reminded what directing is – to know what you want and engage people and help them release their fear, be the very best they can be.”

Mark Anthony Luhrmann, “a tiny kid with an Afro”, was very young when he ran away from his father, whom he describes as a “loving disciplinarian”. The long, “crazy” hair, left Luhrmann with the derisive nickname ‘Baz’, which he decided to defiantly hold on to, particularly after it was used affectionately by his father, a little before he died. His brand, Bazmark, has a crest with a motto, ‘A life lived in fear is a life half lived’. It defines the way Luhrmann thinks – against a formula that’s any but his own and one that is constantly being redefined by life’s experiences. “As you become successful in any way, little switches have turned where you increasingly become disconnected with yourself and you think you’re doing stuff, but you are not. It’s harder to not be your brand. You get tired…of stepping outside your comfort zone. Being here is awesome, but it’s not like I’m 25 and haven’t gone to India before and it’s not like stuff isn’t thrown at us. But the effort, already, has given me hundred-fold back. I could leave today and know that I have been woken up in a way that I wouldn’t have had I not stepped outside my comfort zone. You tend to regret not finding out.”