Shabana refuses to retire

Shabana Azmi has loads on her hands right now. Her play, “Seven”, where she plays a character previously essayed by Meryl Streep, premiered in Delhi yesterday, and then there are films, and her charity work, which will keep her trotting the globe for a good part of the year. Of course, there is also a big party planned for her 60th birthday, but according to her, she doesn’t feel young at heart.Instead, she feels great to be 60.
I willed Meryl Streep’s role to me
Says she, “I had read about “Seven” when it was staged in New York and Meryl Streep played this role, and I thought, ‘This is so much up my street, why didn’t they ask me?’ And just a couple of weeks later I got a call asking me to do that role. It was almost as if it got willed.”
There can’t be a choice between films and theatre
Shabana had to let go of a “very important international film” because she was committed to another play, “Broken Images”, which starts in October. What if she ever had to choose between cinema and theatre, would she be able to choose? “I would think that there should never have to be that choice to be made,” she replies, “Because I think for actors as a discipline, to do both is very, very important. I primarily think of myself as a cinema actor. But I’ve been exposed to theatre, my mother was a stage actress and my father was the president of the largest theatre group in India, and I was just four months old when my mother used to strap me on her back and take me to rehearsals. So I grew up with it. But when I was at St Xavier’s College, Farooq Shaikh was two years my senior, and we formed the Hindi Natya Manch – earlier, there was only an English group. So since very early, I had those deep connections with it. But although I am and I have been trained to be a film actor, doing theatre opens up different areas, which is very important. Because ultimately, it’s about inhabiting the part. But there are different faculties of yours which are required, so I would hate to have to make that choice.”
Baap re, yeh toh nahi ho sakta
She goes on, “I did this thing in “Broken Images” that I cannot believe I did. It has me playing against my own televised image on a TV screen. It’s one single shot of 44 minutes, no retakes, which obviously is a first in my career.”
It’s cheeky, it’s mad!
I have never done such a thing in my life – it’s not a monologue; that is very easy. I on screen am reacting to the person – me – on stage, it’s a very complicated exercise. While working with live actors, if you mess up, your co star can always save you. But here, you can’t be saved because it’s a televised image!”
“I went to Rohtak, and just about an hour before the play was to begin, one of the organisers said that only 30 per cent of the audience understood English, ‘toh aap kuch Hindi mein kar lengi kya?’ I wanted to give him one whack! Ki kuch nahi maloom hai ise theatre ka, yeh bol raha hai ki wahaan jao aur bas kuch bhi kar do! And then, I went forward and did the entire play in Hindi! Matlab I’m getting gooseflesh as I’m telling you. The character on screen was speaking in English and I was speaking Hindi. I cannot believe I did it, because can you imagine how many decisions you have to make? You’ve to translate, and find the correct words, and be in tandem with that image on the screen, and within that time I am making choices like, ‘I’m not finding words toh do teen words English mein bol do, lekin nahin, yeh main boloongi toh iska meaning khatam ho jaega, to tedhi medhi Hindi mein bolo, kaise bhi bolo magar bolo!’ What can I say... it’s crazy! It’s cheeky, it’s mad. If you tell me now to do it, I’ll be so frightened ki baap re, yeh to ho hi nahi sakta!”
In cinema, you can’t lie
Almost jumping out of her chair, Shabana says, “Now THAT sense, of being tested, RIGHT there, with nobody to help you, uske baad jo aapko high milta hai, in films that cannot be. But similarly in cinema, you can’t lie in a 75 mm profile, in theatre you can. Because if you are not feeling the emotion, you can still project it, as the audience is far away. But if you are in such a tight close up (her hands frame her face to demonstrate) aur agar aap ki aankhon mein kuch nahin hai toh woh toh camera catch kar lega. So both have their challenges.”
After Rambos came Rambolinas
When Shabana started with films, a new wave in cinema was just beginning, but most films were still about the angry young man and a woman around somewhere. With her kind of upbringing, was it challenging to find the kind of roles she wanted to do? “No, they just fell in my lap,” Shabana tells us, “My first release was “Ankur”, and apart from winning the National Award it also became a cult film. It started the parallel cinema movement. After that was “Fakira”, which was a superhit film with Shashi Kapoor. So right in the beginning, it worked perfectly and because “Ankur” became so successful, it paved the way for a lot of films of the genre to be made, in which women were given substantial parts. Because if you look at cinema in the 60s, main chup rahoongi was considered a virtue. That changed in the 80s to zakhmi aurat, insaaf ki devi, khoon bhari maang... main marne nahin doongi, main jeene nahin dooongi, pata nahi kya, kya nahi karne doongi! So, first there were Rambos, then we had Rambolinas. But there was nothing that portrayed the complexity of what it is to be a woman. And it was really left to parallel cinema to find some of that and mercifully those parts were available for me, and I’m really grateful.”
I’m a huge Dilip Kumar fan
After such a long career, is there any actor she wishes she had worked with? Shabana’s reply is instant, “Well I really, really, regret the fact that I couldn’t work with Ingmar Bergman. I used to say that if Ingmar Bergman asked me to take a jhadoo and sweep the floor from one end to the other, I would even do that.” And is there anyone in India? “Dilip Kumar. I mean, I’ve been a heewwuuge Dilip Kumar fan! When I watch him on screen, there is absolutely nobody quite like him.” Has she got any plans of directing? Shabana shakes her head, “You know at the moment I’m so happy being an actor; and direction is too much hard work!”
I don’t aspire to be 40
She turns 60 today, which is the official retirement age for most people. Does she even feel 60? “I definitely don’t feel 40,” she replies after a pause, “And I don’t aspire to be 50, I’m very happy with being 60. As long as you embrace your age, and embrace whatever life has given you, the good along with the bad, only then can you count to be more than just the sum total of your parts. I think that’s very important, and in order to do that you have to embrace your age, and understand that there are certain things you will not be able to do, but there is a lot more. I’m very happy being 60 because there is a lot of space today, for 60 and above.”
So, she doesn’t feel young at heart, but she is just happy to be 60? “I don’t even aspire to be 40. See I don’t dye my hair,” Shabana says, pointing out her grey strands. But what about cinema, which is a visual medium and everyone’s in a race to look younger? “Who says you can’t look good after a particular age?” she shoots back, “You don’t look good when you are desperate to show, ‘nahin, I look younger’.”
Plenty of romance in my life
Shabana often says that Javed Akhtar doesn’t have a single romantic bone in his body... “And his reply to that is, if you are a trapeze artist you don’t hang upside down in your home all the time!” Shabana laughs. But has it ever bothered her that her husband writes beautiful poetry for other men, but isn’t romantic with his own wife? “Expression of romance cannot be standardised, or homogenised. I have a problem believing that the expression of romance is candlelit dinners and gifting diamonds. It interests me not-in-the-least,” Shabana states with a dramatic waving of her palm, “Material gifts are insignificant for me. But a letter, a line, a look, an expression, a certain moment shared together, silence, all of that, maybe it doesn’t count as romance in how it’s come to be viewed, but in my dictionary, that is what it is, and I have plenty of it with my husband.”
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