I REFUSE TO BE JUST A PROP
ACTOR RICHA CHADHA ON FITTING IN, FILM AND FASHION CHOICES AND HER JOURNEY FROM DELHI TO BOLLYWOOD
Richa Chadha was born in 1986, in Amritsar, to a nonSikh family. The year defines her. It was in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star, the city was embroiled in the uprising of pro-Khalistan militants, where a furious assertion of identity manifested itself in violence against the ‘other’. When Chadha was a year-and-ahalf, her family moved to Delhi to start a new life. “It’s just context according to me. I don’t want to talk about it. I was very young,” says Chadha, now armed with powerful performances in her armour, looking squarely into a mirror after drying off from a gruelling photo shoot, where she spent close to an hour in the shower, posing as both bitch and belle (and often an amalgamation of the two) in an off-shoulder top and a towel.
While she does not discuss it actively, the ‘refugee’ status does affect her beliefs. “I am only very strictly liberal and like to let people be, in terms of what their faith is,” she says. “I’m a very spiritual person. I believe in energy and some kind of God—I don’t think science can explain consciousness yet— but that is pretty much it.”
But growing up in the Capital is something she remembers fondly. Chadha lived in a joint family with four brothers. Her parents, both teachers, have always given her a lot of freedom and her dad’s belly played a major role in setting aspirations to be a performer in motion. “I must have been four or five when I decided I want to be an actor,” she says. “I really enjoyed making my family laugh.”
It’s difficult to imagine that the actor who played the cuss-spewing, husbandbeating, violence-driven Nagma Khatoon in Gangs of
Wasseypur launched into performer mode as a toddler playing the fool, but that is exactly the kind of confused presumptuousness that annoys Chadha. “It gets tiring for me to keep explaining to people that you are not necessarily that bold person in real life. A person has different shades.” And this is true for people who meet her both professionally and personally.
In an industry obsessed with appearances, pigeonholing is something of a sport, and breaking out a real struggle. It is tough to typecast someone who has played both Bholi Punjaban the loud-mouthed badass in
Fukrey and the demure Sukhpreet in Sarbjit, smashed mean trolls and collaborated with comedians Kannan Gill and Biswa Kalyan Rath on a project. She says “People in the industry think it’s either going to be short skirts and blowers in the hair or rustic and non-glam because of roles like Masaan and Gangs
of Wasseypur.” “There’s nothing in the middle.”
Meeting her reveals, however, that the Oye Lucky!
Lucky Oye! actor is a heady mix of glam and grit, intellect and wit. An avid reader as a teen, the once shy, bespectacled girl from Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in central Delhi grew up on Salman Rushdie and remembers grumbling about having to read school books over Shame and Midnight’s Children. The reading also helped her pick up nuance in films she watched earlier on. “I would watch Hero No. 1 and Coolie
No. 1, but I would also watch
Shyam Benegal films with my mum... and I’d feel equally passionate about both,” she says. And eventually, in college, she took to theatre. “I worked a little with Barry John. I was an extra in a play by the Theatre In Education ( TIE) Repertory and learned a lot,” she says.
And this was what helped her when she moved to Mumbai in 2007, ready to be a “heroine”. With a dollop of confidence and a friend from the Film and Television Institute ( FTII) in Andheri West to crash with, Chadha took the plunge that thousands take every day. And a play she did with John, who had also coincidentally relocated, got her noticed. A round of auditions later, she finally earned a part in her first film,
“It’s never easy to first move out of your home and start doing things on your own,” says Chadha. “So it was like a big growing- up experience for me, but I made the most of it, made friends, took the train, autos and buses.”
After Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Chadha spent a lot of time doing theatre, workshops and even trained in street jazz dance. The film made her a recognisable enough to easily bag TV commercials and make a quick buck, but there was a breed of ads no professional lure could compel her to do. “I just don’t think I would ever do fairness creams,” says Chadha. “I think a lot of children grow up believing they are lesser because of their skin; I don’t want to perpetuate that. It’s a colonial hangover and it’s time we get over it.”
Making principled choices was something she was always conscious of. While saying no to films is never easy, Chadha made sure she did not dilute her repertoire by throwing herself at any odd film that came her way. “It is difficult to say no because it’s always tough to say no to money,” she recalls. But she does want to do what she calls a “fun” film— anything she thinks she might enjoy, since the demanding roles, she admits, do take a toll on her. “I actually enjoyed Welcome, I thought it was really funny. But I won’t really do anything in which I am just a prop— something that anybody can do.”
Fittingly, her forthcoming film is her first “song- anddance commercial” project. Pooja Bhatt’s Cabaret, involved an entirely “different grammar” for Chadha, but the experience was immensely thrilling, she admits. “It wasn’t a random break- into- dance situation, all the lip sync songs were performances and the character is on stage so it didn’t feel very weird like that,” she says. “What is weird is wearing completely outlandish costumes and high heels and then balancing and dancing. That is weird.”
The Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram- Leela actor otherwise enjoys dressing up and has terrific people skills— two of the most prized qualities if one wants to make it in the film industry. She may have struggled with body image issues at first, faced with bulimia or “Big B” as she calls it, and odd fashion choices, but Chadha eventually came into her own. “I may not have always had the best taste, because it was a bit whacked out. You have different phases— an all black phase, a big kajal phase, short hair, long hair, that kind of stuff.” And even more daunting is dolling up for the red carpet abroad, as Chadha needed to do for Cannes in 2015. Fortunately, she had kicked her insecurities and knew exactly how she wanted to look. “I didn’t want to look like a costume version of myself. I did assert my Indian identity, because I did pick a sari, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I need to look bridal,” she says.
From a magazine intern ( for a period of three shoert months) to Masaan, from
Fukrey to f*** you tweets, from kicking bulimia to owning Bollywood, Chadha has pretty much been as intrepid and independent as it gets. And she isn’t quite done yet.