Kalki Koechlin: Girl on fire

As a six-year-old running around on the streets of Pondicherry in a pink dress and a pigtail, Kalki Koechlin never realised that she was a bit different. She had white skin, brown hair, spoke in a French accent and was learning Tamil, but like many other kids around her, would also quickly gobble up an extra idli the minute her mother wasn’t looking. As a French girl living in a small town in South India, she felt quite at home, but she also felt something of an outsider. “The ‘Who am I?’ question happened a bit too early for me in life, even before I knew what it meant,” she confesses. Even when she started acting in Hindi cinema, there was no particular slot she could fit into. She could barely speak Hindi, she obviously did not look ‘Indian’ enough, and her best offers included item numbers meant for ‘firang’ girls who’d play extras in hero-centric films. “Indians are obsessed with fair skin, but even then brownie points were reserved for girls who were fair and ‘Indian’ looking,” she says with a smile.

Today, countless plays and over a dozen films old, Kalki Koechlin seems quite comfortable in her skin. She chooses to ditch the stilettos till the photographer requests a full-length shot. She tries to stay casual, but appears a lot more conscious of the way she carries herself. “I tell myself I should relax, but I can’t till the movie is out,” she says, not trying to hide her anxiety over the release of her newest and most important film, Margarita, with a Straw. We’re at the ADAPT (Able Disabled All People Together) foundation in Mumbai where Kalki spent months researching material for the role of Laila, a young girl suffering from cerebral palsy, a neurological ailment that handicaps body movement and muscle function right from infancy. After That Girl in Yellow Boots, this is Kalki’s first film as the central character, and undoubtedly her most challenging one till date.

She plays a teenager not just suffering from a serious physical disorder, but also grappling with her sexuality. It’s among the most complex characters that a Hindi film heroine has attempted of late, but Kalki insists that it could very well be the story of any teenager growing up in New Delhi. Her approach to the role has less to do with the disability, and more to capture the soul of a 17-year-old who’s discovering the meaning of sex and love. “The role is based on a real-life woman named Malini, my director Shonali Bose’s cousin,” she says. “When you meet her, the first thing you will notice is this light-of- life smile that she owns. It defines her and how she gets through stuff. That is Laila. She is way beyond the wheelchair she is bound to, way more than the words she sometimes can or cannot express. It’s the spirit of Laila that people should fall in love with, hopefully.”

The film has travelled to almost 40 different festivals across the globe and is being lauded especially for its strong and sensitive content. Says a Vanity Fair review: ‘Bose and Koechlin never lose sight of the emotional core of the piece and, while subtlety is not this film’s strong point, you can feel its insistent pull on the tear ducts at key points.’

It has been explored in the West through cinema, but sexuality of the disabled is still taboo territory for Indian films. In a country where people find it difficult to portray sex between two individuals without innuendo, this is a story capable of jolting stifled sensibilities. “We’re the ones who are usually disabled in the way we treat people. We are awkward with anyone who’s different from us and we don’t know how to behave or treat that person. Even when I was shooting, I’d see people whispering to each other, being awkward around me. I’d quickly make a joke to break the ice, and that soon became a character trait,” adds Kalki.

At the Toronto Film Festival last year, she remembers observing a group of Indian aunties watching the film. They were glued to the screen as the kissing scene between Laila and her lady love Khanum played out. She was obviously nervous, not knowing what to expect. “Toronto has a lot of NRIs, and frankly, I had no idea how they would react,” she says, “But thankfully they came out both laughing and crying. It’s a story that would resonate with everyone.”

It wasn’t a part that came to her easily, though. “Kalki almost did not do the film because I required her to give me three full months of commitment to train as Laila,” says director Shonali Bose, “I wasn’t ready to budge for anything less, and she had Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani to finish. I auditioned over 100 girls after Kalki backed out, but eventually I had to go back to her. I knew she was talented, but what she has done with this film is incomparable… in India.”

In 2013, Kalki Koechlin was trained in the Grotowski acting technique for over six weeks by a popular ex-acting coach who insists on not being named. “I’d spend at least an hour on the wheelchair every day for six months,” says Kalki, “The psychology of it affected me more than the physicality. After a point, my reactions as Laila became like body memory. I’d go out with the cast for a drink and I’d start speaking like her, or holding the drink like she would. It was so unconscious that it became a habit.”

Laila’s is not a role many current heroines are capable of or would be willing to play. There are few actors who are able to treat their roles with a complete lack of prejudice, and it’s a trait that has been Kalki’s biggest strength. It could be the fact that she was exposed to multiple cultures while growing up, but she has never seemed uncomfortable with complex roles that many other actresses would steer clear of.

Kalki Koechlin started in Bollywood with the role of a prostitute in Dev D and then went on to play a masseuse who gives hand jobs for a living in That Girl in Yellow Boots. She followed it up with Shaitaan as a mentally disturbed teenager who finds solace in a destructive group of friends and then with Shanghai as a student who fights for the rights of the working class. “I remember my first audition for Dev D was one where I had to have phone sex with a customer. I did it in a very matter-of- fact way, instead of overplaying the sexual aspect of it. I thought for someone who does this as an everyday job, it would be very matter of fact. I got a call back for that part within 10-minutes of that audition.”

Her background in theatre helped her submit to every part she played with honesty and grit. Perhaps why you will see her perform in at least one play every year. From Rajat Kapoor’s Hamlet to Manav Kaul’s Colour Blind to Atul Kumar’s Trivial Disasters, she has always stayed in touch with the stage, which she says is her ‘gym’ as an actor. “Growing up, I was always on stage. It was the only place I would not feel displaced. I could be any character and just mask myself with those emotions. When I was studying at Goldsmiths in London, I felt alienated as someone who grew up in India. When I was in India, I’d feel like I’m the wrong skin colour. There’s been a constant search for identity—which the stage and acting fulfilled for me.”

This has kept not just the actor, but also the activist in her alive. She doesn’t think all films are meant to or should make social commentary, but has always been on the forefront in trying to initiate social change. The mono-act on womanhood that she wrote and performed at a women’s day conclave in 2012 created a stir in more ways than one. Without a stammer, she mouthed lines like, “Women have been sidelined from… I don’t know, the Big Bang. Draupadi was married off to five men. Wow, five husbands. God knows, in fact everybody knows, I have enough trouble with one.” It was the first time that people realised there was more to her than just the cutesiness. Out of nowhere, the Hindi film industry had thrown up a feminist icon.

“I’ve always tried to talk about things; it’s just that nobody listened to me earlier. Like my play Skeleton Woman was based on a very feminist book called Women Who Run with the Wolves. The consciousness of feminism and all that women deal with are things I have always been interested in,” she says. “You tell from life, right? You talk about what you know from your life and experience. There were times when I used to tweet about stuff and nobody gave a damn. Now if I make any political tweet, I have 20 haters saying ‘fuck you bitch’. I’m not trying to start a war, offend people, but it’s about freedom of speech, just expressing your opinion right.”

Two years ago, she spoke up about facing sexual abuse as a child. “I spoke about it without really thinking. My point of coming out was to tell people that it is okay to talk about it, it’s not taboo, and you shouldn’t fear social ostracism. I don’t want my story to become a headline, or people circling my tears.”

She realises that as a Bollywood actor she lives in a more liberal context than many around her. But she resolves never to censor her thoughts, pointing towards a recent spate of attacks she has been facing on social media for fervently speaking against rape in the country. “I always think twice before I put up a tweet, but it’s the only space where I can be myself. When I spoke against rape and banning of the Nirbhaya documentary, people said things like, ‘I hope your family will get raped, I hope you go back to your country you fucking imposter’. The nature of hate has become political and racist. That is really scary for me.”

Her outspokenness has somehow coupled with the single status she earned after separating from husband (and film director) Anurag Kashyap last year. Though she insists they are still good friends, marriage she says was never for her. “Both Anurag and I are in a good place. We pick up the phone and talk mostly about our work. It’s different to share this friendship. We’ve given each other the space to get over the roughness of it. Marriage is a social construct and we did it just to keep our parents happy. Culturally, we haven’t yet reached a point where we can make babies without tying the knot, so people get married.”

At times, she sounds like a woman ready to take on the world, and at others, she’s a girl still trying to figure out what she wants. She likes to be both, and does not want to hide her flaws. The shy girl who took to the stage to shed her inhibitions says she feels like herself now more than ever. “I’ve become a bit quick witted and on my toes. I’ve become less shy, except when it comes to boys. It’s depressing, I know!”

Well, let there be more like her. As she says in one of her poems:

Enough of a woman who has become
vicious from her environment

Enough of a woman who has to become
a man to compete

Who has to weaken where she is strong,
or strengthen where she is weak

Enough of a woman who has to make
space for child and lover, who has to occupy
what space is left over…

Enough of girls in fairy dresses with
bulimia and major complexes…

We’re tired. We’re tired of waxing,
manicuring, exercising, aborting,
procreating, posing, shopping, threading,
the pill, make up high heels, stainless steels,
tampons, covering up, nurturing, caring
and crying…

Ah… Sometimes I just need to breathe.

Dev DKalki KoechlinMargaritaSkeleton WomanThat Girl in Yellow BootsWith a StrawYeh Jawaani Hai Deewani