Adil Hussain’s Conditions

When Abhishek Chaubey wanted to cast Adil Hussain in his first Hindi film, he had to fly from Bombay to Delhi to meet the actor. Hussain, who trained at the National School of Drama and Drama Studio London, had acted on stage and in a few Assamese films till then. Hussain agreed to do the role that eventually kickstarted what is now an international career, but had three preconditions: that he would not move to Mumbai from Delhi, where he lived then and continues to live; that his co-actor would be available when he had to do his scenes; and that he would not dub his dialogues, so the movie would have to be shot in sync sound. Chaubey agreed to all the conditions and, sure enough, Vidya Balan would be there in every scene he did in Ishqiya (2010). Hussain, who has a long list of international films such as Life of Pi and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, continues to work across languages, most recently in Netflix’s Tooth Pari but bemoans the lack of good scripts in Hindi. “I can’t utter dialogues like doodh ka doodh aur paani ka paani hojaye,” he says. He remains a valued teacher and mentor to younger actors, whether it is advising Sonam Kapoor Ahuja to stand up for what she believes in, or giving Saiyami Kher a refresher course in what the craft of acting is about. Hussain’s determinedly real and rooted life in Delhi gives him the tools to negotiate the energy of Mumbai, where hustling is a way of life. As he says, when he was offered the prestigious job of artistic director at the Royal Conservatoire of Performing Arts in The Hague, he turned it down because of one visual which encapsulates Delhi for him. “It was when I would go to my neighbourhood taxi stand and if the driver there was eating, he would always offer to share his lunch with me before driving me to my destination. That’s the unexpected warmth of this city,” he said to me recently.

The Issue with Being Too Good

Is it a problem being too good at your job in the Hindi film industry? Shefali Shah’s case makes one think so. After a string of brilliant performances in Human, Delhi Crime Season 2, Jalsa and Darlings, Shah seems to have taken a break from shooting. But it turns out that after a busy 2021 and 2022, she has been waiting for something worth her while to capture her imagination. Nothing has so far. Season 3 of Delhi Crime is being written, as are a film and a series she has committed to, but 2023 has so far been barren, except for a delightful cameo in the murder mystery Neeyat. While she has been recovering from the after effects of Covid-19 which she suffered from in August last year, she thinks it’s because no one knows what to do with her. “Some directors came to me with films, selling it like the central character. But it’s silly because all I have to do is to read the script and figure it is not. It is really annoying,” she says. She hopes that scripts will be written for her, as they should for someone who has created iconic characters like Vartika, Ruksana and Mehrunissa, but she isn’t holding her breath. Her work on Jalsa and Darlings showed how she was able to play the same kind of character, a lower class Muslim cook and ferocious mother, in two entirely different ways, a tribute to her skill. Not the kind of person to sit around, she is used to popping a pill and going to work even when unwell, she is trying to use the downtime to build her strength. The International Emmy nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in Delhi Crime Season 2 is a much-deserved honour and she hopes she wins. From focusing on the crime in Season 1 to the character in Season 2, where she displayed that much more empathy, Shah’s Vartika is more than a policewoman. “Catching criminals is not victory enough for her now, she wants to change society,” says Shah.

Scene and Heard

There was a time immediately after Gandhi when Ben Kingsley would refuse to play Indian roles. Though born Krishna Bhanji, he renamed himself because of the attitude towards non-white actors in the past. But now with the global emphasis on diversity, he can breathe easy. Having played a Sikh driver in Learning to Drive (2015), he plays the somewhat magical Imdad Khan, in Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Dr Ganderbai in Anderson’s Poison, two of four short films the Indophile director has made based on Roald Dahl’s short stories. All these short films are streaming on Netflix.

Adil HussainBen KingsleyBollywoodcinemaShefali Shah