A new state of mind

I have definitely passed that stage.

Q. When you say passed the stage, do you mean women have a limited time-span in the industry? A.

I have never been careerdriven. I have always been interested in doing whatever interests me. I never looked at my acting as a career. I did acting because I loved it. I consider it that way. I do something if it interests me and if the subject is good, people are good because ultimately you have to spend your time well.

Q. But what about the bigger picture? Don’t you think women in general have limited scope when it comes to Hindi cinema? A.

Women have a limited life span in films if they identify themselves only with their fictional identity. But if you are willing to transcend that, then you can go on and on. Look at Tabu and look at Manishka Koirala and Aishwarya [Rai]. They are not doing the coy beauty queen now, so they are doing pretty well. At 40 you cannot play a 20-year-old. So you have to be open to different kinds of roles and different kinds of subjects, and you have to put your vanity aside for the sake of art and cinema.

Q. And how does one reconcile with the position of women in Bollywood with the obviously better opportunities available to the male actors? A.

Some of the better-known male actors are producing their own movies. They generate those numbers. The audiences are more accepting for them. Men, as they grow older are perceived to grow more powerful; a woman’s power, on the other hand, is seen in her youth and her sexuality. As long as women also continue pursuing their power and their youth and sexuality, there will always be a lopsided balance. Who is stopping anybody from producing a movie or developing a subject? That’s what actresses in the West do. It is doable, but it will take time. Even in the West, this took a lot of time.

Q. You are one of the few actresses who has spoken about how prevalent the ghastly “casting- couch mentality” is in the film industry. Do you think today, things in this respect have now been contained? A.

I don’t know how things work now. But definitely they are far more professional now. The mindset is also quite different from what it was 20 years ago. And at the same time, the basic dynamic of power and exploitation has always been there. So that will continue to a certain extent; but surely nobody can get away with it as easily as they could in the past. In today’s world, I would say it’s all consensual. Casting couch is happening, but a woman is a party to it. There is nothing like exploitation because everyone has a choice. In our time, everyone was doing it. So even talking about it was considered blasphemy. Now you can just brush it aside and move on.

Q. How challenging was it for you to adapt your autobiography, Drama Queen, into a play? A.

It was very challenging and, frankly, I struggled with it for a few months. The book is very vast in scope and scale, and to condense that into a format suitable for the stage, to condense the material, to keep it confineable in a space… Also, I have written a play before but I have not written a play that has actually gone on stage. So for me, to make it viable, feasible and still retain the essence of it was very challenging. I had gone through at least five or six drafts and with every draft I was terribly insecure. But it was a good learning process.

Q. You have really been a private person all this while. With you have in a way gone public with your life, as well as with your own vulnerabilities. So why, and when exactly, did the thought of writing an autobiography strike you? A.

Drama Queen is not entirely an autobiography—it is a fictional memoir. It is part fact, part fiction. It is written in a very humourous way, without a serious undertone. It is not a kitty-party book. I think Drama Queen allowed me to kind of pull back and look at everything with a lot of humour and candour. I enjoyed it. I wrote the entire book in five or six weeks; so it was entirely a state-of-mind thing. As I was writing it, people became characters for me. It no longer felt like I was writing about myself. It became quite an independent story by itself. Though many of the incidents in the book are real, many are fictional as well.

Q. Why a fictional memoir in particular, instead of a straight-up autobiography? Were you looking to try your hand at this genre? A.

The genre of fictional memoirs is quite common in the West. But for me, this book just happened. Originally, it was just supposed to be a compilation for my blog, but as I started to write it, it became a book by itself. And like I have said before, people mentioned in the book, including my own character, Suchitra, became by themselves independent. Then I developed those character. So am I exactly like I am in the book? No way! But in that state of mind, I am that person. When I was writing the book, I was that person.

Q. While reading one of your interviews, I learned about that one recent incident in Lucknow where two people walked out of the screening of your play, and the organiser told you that it had to do with some line in the play that had to with caste. Do such reactions disappoint you? A.

It didn’t disappoint me. I think one must be sensitive to one’s environment also. Say, for example, if I am going to perform in a place like Lucknow, then I might remove those portions that might offend someone from the play because I have written it in humour, but others might not see it in a humorous way. I think one must be sensitive to one’s audiences also. So it didn’t offend me. Also, when I took out a bottle of wine for the first time, there was a zap in the audience in Lucknow. Culturally things are different. I didn’t mind that (the wine episode), but when the caste thing came out, I thought that I should have been more aware of it and probably should have taken the line out because while I have said it in humour, for the audiences, it is a very sensitive issue.

Q. You think the country is equipped enough to be openly talking about sensitive issues like single parenting and mental health, which are also among the themes dealt with in Drama Queen? A.

Drama Queen talks a lot about single parenting. In a city like Mumbai, it is quite accepted. There is no stigma attached to a single woman or a child being brought up by a single parent. But I can imagine that in the rest of India and in smaller towns and villages, it is tough. One needs to accept individual choice. In India, a woman is still not just seen as a person; she is seen as a mother, as a sister, as a wife and stuff like that. So the transition to start seeing the woman as a person has to slowly come about. A woman is entitled to her choices and decisions as any other person.

Q. You also want to adapt the book into a movie. How soon will that happen? A.

“Women have a limited life span in films if they identify themselves only with their fictional identity. But if you are willing to transcend that, then you can go on and on. Look at Tabu and look at Manishka Koirala and Aishwarya [Rai]. They are not doing the coy beauty queen now, so they are doing pretty well.”

At same point. I am still thinking about it.

Q. Theatre or films, which do you think is a better medium for an actor? A.

They both are completely different. Theatre gives you instant satisfaction. Movies give you exposure and that’s where the money is. There is no money in theatre. You do it entirely for satisfaction. And the craft itself is completely different. Acting on the stage and acting in front of the camera is very different. But every actor I think could get a little bit of theatre experience—it gives you that discipline and it gives you a bit of craft that is always handy. It also gives you confidence.

Q. You are also a singer. In the mid- to late-90s, you also released a few songs. However, we don’t see the musical you now. Why so? A.

No. I just got out of that whole work thing. I do so many things. Also, much had changed in the music industry too. Now non-film music is coming back, but in the middle things had changed completely. In fact, I had recorded an album in 2005 or 2007, but I scrapped it because the business was so different. But I am hoping to do something now, let us see. My music is in my blood. So, luckily, that won’t go away.