I GENUINELY DON’T CARE WHAT ANYBODY ELSE SAYS ANYMORE
AN ECSTATIC VIDYA BALAN ON WINNING THE PADMA SHRI AWARD AND HER PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.
Vidya Balan’s feet are planted on the ground but she is still on cloud nine. There’s good reason for it. On January 25, while shooting for Bobby Jasoos at Filmalaya Studios, her husband Siddharth Roy Kapur called to tell her that she had been honoured with a Padma Shri. “Siddharth was like, ‘Now put down the phone; I’m sending them your number and they will call you,’ says Balan who was seated in a vanity van. “I was like, ‘But, I’m just about to go for a shot.’ He replied, ‘No, you’re not.’ Luckily for me, the shot wasn’t ready and they called immediately.”
Naturally when the 35-year-old actress shared the news with her parents, there were tears of joy all around. Their reaction made Balan realise that the news was genuine and says that she is still processing the magnitude of the accolade. “This award goes beyond a performance or a film,” she says. “I never imagined that I’d receive a Padma Shri someday. I didn’t scream or freak out. There was just a sense of disbelief.”
But that didn’t mean work came to a stop. Balan celebrated the honour on the sets of Bobby Jasoos by giving each member of the cast and crew a box of gulab jamuns from Jhama, the famous sweets shop in Chembur, the Mumbai suburb where she grew up. Balan may share a home with Kapur in Juhu today but as she likes to say: “You can take a girl out of Chembur, but you can’t take Chembur out of a girl.” So when a few Delhi-ites on the set contested her claim that the eatery makes the best gulab jamuns in the world, she was glad that she was able to prove them wrong.
After shooting for 51 days with the film’s crew in Hyderabad and Mumbai, Balan has left quite an impression on the team. “She throws no tantrums at all,” says Mithun from the production team. “She is OK with a smaller vanity, shooting in the sun or climbing a little for the shot. She is the rockstar of actresses.” Looking at her filmography which is filled with commanding performances in critically-acclaimed and award-winning films such as Paa (2009), Ishqiya (2010), The Dirty Picture (2011) and
Kahaani (2012), Balan is indeed the hero of her films. In 2014, which is being hailed as the year of detectives in Bollywood, everyone from Sushant Singh Rajput ( Detective
Byomkesh Bakshi) to Ranbir Kapoor ( Jagga Jasoos) will play a sleuth on the big screen. And Balan is not one to be left behind. When she first heard about Bobby Jasoos, produced by Dia Mirza and Sahil Sangha’s Born Free Entertainment, she thought, “They want me to play Kitty to Karamchand”. With Balan’s acting chops, that obviously wasn’t going to happen. Balan was offered the lead role playing Bobby, an aspiring 30-year-old detective living in Hyderabad. As the eldest, still single, daugh-
ter in a Muslim family, Bobby has to battle both parental and societal pressure to fulfill her dream and solve an important case.
With a cast which includes Ali Fazal, Rajendra Gupta and Arjan Bajwa, Balan knows there is a lot riding on her. But she has proved that she is capable of carrying a film on her shoulders as evident from the box office success of The Dirty Picture and Kahaani. So when Sangha and Mirza had to choose an actress to star in their second production, they knew Balan was the actress to bank on.
Balan says it didn’t take her very long to sign on for the role. “People ask me what’s your dream role and I tell them, ‘I don’t dream about roles’,” says Balan. “They just happen. People have very fertile imaginations and I don’t want to limit the scope of my roles to what I can imagine.” Directed by the debutant Samar Shaikh and written by his wife Sanyukta Chawla, Balan was game despite the inexperience of the crew on paper. What perhaps convinced her to get on board was the passion of Mirza and Sangha. “Dia and I go back to Parineeta and [Lage Raho] Munnabhai days,” says Balan, “and she has always been very warm, genuine and encouraging. Together, they have created an atmosphere conducive to bring the best out in all of us. When you give respect to everyone on the team, they feel valued. They in turn feel a sense of ownership for the film.”
What makes Balan noteworthy is that she has rarely been seen as a mere accessory to the hero or an actress who makes a hit-and-miss appearance and has nothing substantial to contribute to a film. “That’s always been a strong consideration,” she says about the projects she picks. “The character’s age, size and intellect never bothers me. I don’t worry about what someone else is doing. My concern is what I am doing in a film. If I am able to answer that and if I am happy and satisfied with the answer, I go ahead and do it.”
In her sole release last year, Ghanchakkar, she may not have been the protagonist (Emraan Hashmi) but she was content to play his loud, tackily dressed Punjabi housewife who stirs up trouble. Even in the forthcoming Shaadi Ke Side Effects (which releases on February 28), which will see her opposite Farhan Akhtar for the first time, Balan feels that the story is “more from the man’s perspective on how life changes after marriage”. But she isn’t complaining. “As an actor I am hungry for good parts,” she says but, “I don’t want to limit myself to play only protagonists. If someone gives me a juicy or exciting part, I am happy to do it.” Doing a film, for Balan, boils down to her need to “live different” lives. Bobby Jasoos has allowed her do that. She dons six disguises including that of a beggar.
Balan’s mantra is simple: Have something to do. But Balan knows
I DON’T WORRY ABOUT WHAT SOMEONE ELSE IS DOING. MY CONCERN IS WHAT I AM DOING IN A FILM. IF I AM ABLE TO ANSWER THAT I GO AHEAD AND DO IT.
that “how everyone defines their career is also different. With due respect to them, some people are OK doing more songs than the number of scenes they have in a film. And they do that with conviction and beautifully, which is great. But I am not one of those.”
Balan has not just done unconventional roles but she also doesn’t conform to what is the common perception of a Bollywood heroine. It’s not about long legs, tiny waist and being a fashionista. In Bollywood, she is a much-needed anomaly, who draws audiences not only for her simple good looks but also on the strength and conviction of her performance. “Everyone has a strength that they tap into,” says Balan, who made her debut with Parineeta (2005). She was then 26, and much older than most Bollywood debutantes. But Balan has no regrets. It helped that she was already a familiar
I TRIED MY HAND AT DIFFERENT THINGS AND DID WHAT I BELIEVED IN. SOME FILMS WORKED, SOME DIDN’T. I THINK I WAS DOING THE BEST I COULD DO AT THAT STAGE. I WOULDN’T WANT TO CHANGE ANYTHING.
face; as one of the five sisters on Balaji’s hit TV comedy Hum Paanch (she was the nerdy, bespectacled Radhika) and a veteran of several ad films.
Balan has never tried to stake claim to the throne of being an alternative heroine and emphasises that she has done her share of commercial films. “I tried my hand at different things,” she says. “But I did what I believed in. Some of them worked, some didn’t. I think I was doing the best I could do at that stage. I wouldn’t want to change anything.” The happiness quotient also plays an integral part. “If you are not happy and chasing something and then don’t get it, it is going to be a disaster,” she says. Balan says she did everything with conviction barring one —
Kismat Konnection. “My heart was not in it and you can see that onscreen,” she
says. “I thought I could sleepwalk through the film.”
In a career spanning only nine years, Balan has enjoyed quick success winning a host of awards including the National Award for best actress for her uninhibited and compelling performance in The Dirty Picture. But the meaty parts came only after a period fraught with scathing attacks on her sense of style as well as her size in Heyy
Babyy ( 2007) and Kismat Konnection ( 2008). But she now deals with her detractors in her own special way. “I realised that whatever I did no one seemed to be happy about my appearance,” says Balan.” I decided, ‘ Let me make myself happy and do what I like doing, that way at least one person will be happy.’”
Balan has also demonstrated that she is a risk-taker. She signed Paa, in which she had to play mother to a 67-year old Amitabh Bachchan. Many thought it would be professional suicide. Not Balan. But that’s not to say she didn’t deliberate over her decision. “I was like, ‘Oh My God, would it be right for me to do this at this stage [of my career]?’ she wondered. “But from the time I heard the script, my in-
NO ONE SEEMED HAPPY ABOUT MY APPEARANCE. SO I FINALLY DECIDED, LET ME DO WHAT I LIKE DOING, THAT WAY AT LEAST ONE PERSON WILL BE HAPPY.
stinct was to go ahead.”
Paa proved a turning point in Balan’s career. She’d follow it up with stellar work as Jessica’s silently raging sister Sabrina in No One Killed Jessica, the sexy siren in The Dirty Picture and the determined pregnant wife who takes to the streets to find her missing husband in Kahaani. This body of work would see her gain international recognition as she was invited to be a part of the Cannes Film Festival jury (2013) headed by Steven Spielberg. There too the fashion police were ready with sharpened knives but Balan couldn’t care less. “I wear what I want to,” she says. “My body weight and size fluctuates. I am happy with myself, the way I am. I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m not saying I’m Zen and that I don’t have bad hair days. But that’s part of being a human being and a woman. I genuinely don’t care about what anybody else says anymore.”
Along with professional success, there’s lot brewing on the personal front too. Balan and Kapur, managing director of Disney India, battle packed schedules to make time for each other. “It feels like we are still in the honeymoon phase,” she says. “Bobby Jasoos is the longest spell I have been away from him post marriage. But I didn’t feel like I was away from him because he was also out of the country.” Balan adds that Kapur’s entry in her life has only made things better.
“I really feel settled in a certain way,” she says, “in terms of being calmer. Siddharth is an extremely non-judgmental person and it’s wonderful getting another perspective. I am enjoying living with him and I have gained another family in the process. I’m now not so restless and therefore able to invest that extra energy into my work.”