Aahana thinks things haven’t reverted to ‘normalcy’
While the world maybe returning to normalcy, actor Aahana S Kumra is still treading carefully, and she advises others to do the same. “I don’t think things have reverted to normalcy. It’s a myth,” she tells us.
Call My Agent: Bollywood actor further explains, “We might go into another wave and I don’t even remember which one it is going to be now. Sure, work has been going on, but we still have to be careful on set and be masked up. Considering I have had Covid-19 twice and multiple health problems in the last two years, I can only advise everyone to continue to be careful. During my illness, when I could not work, tuning into teleplays helped me stay connected to theatre and feel energised.”
The actor says that for her, life is not completely normal and she is still figuring things out. “However, I look forward to travelling and performing plays, especially Sir Sir Sarla, once again, not just in India but abroad. Because of the pandemic, travelling, the logistics of mounting plays, and accommodating a crew in a new city have become really expensive. And even when you travel, you can’t be carefree and have to be concerned with so many things that can go wrong. I really hope life gets back to normal and gives us back our sense of ease,” says the 37-year-old.
As an actor, Kumra does admit that there is an urgency to amp up work to make up for the lost time in the last two years. “Of course, we feel bad about missing out on work or shows getting postponed or delayed, but I am glad that Indian theatre is getting represented globally via OTTs. Even when we could not do live shows, so many people who had never seen Sir Sir Sarla on stage enjoyed it on the small screen.
She is active in the theatre scene. Talking about how the ease in Covid-19 restrictions has impacted her work as a theatre professional, she says, “We have been able to stage our play and had a phenomenal response and this has shown us that we were missed by the audience. But as cases keep surging again and we never know what will happen next. Thankfully, we still have television to fall back on.”
Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali shares that despite several actors and filmmakers expressing interest in having their projects screened at international film festivals, he has never aspired to taking his films to any. His movie Highway (2014), starring Alia Bhatt, remains the only film that ever made the rounds at an international film fest, the Berlin International Film Festival.
Ali, who was in Delhi attending Kathakar International Storytellers Festival, says, “I never thought about it. I know a group of people that make movies that would go to a film festival, but I don’t think like that. I [essentially] want to make movies that people would want to watch; if they make it to Cannes, it’s fine.”
He adds, “I want all my movies to have a large global audience, but I’ve never aspired for any of my movies to be at a film fest. I don’t have much knowledge about it (film fests) either. But maybe I should think about it.”
Ali’s last movie was Love Aaj Kal (2020), which was the successor of the 2009 film of the same name, also directed by him. Ask him when the audience will get to see him making magic on the big screen again and he says that he is gearing up for “many” future projects, but he “can’t talk” about them at the moment.