Vidya Balan: Our Lady of Liberation

IT WAS A warm July night and the year was 2010. A young aspiring actor waited for a car outside a brightly lit masjid in Bandra. She looked around nervously, knotting the end of her dupatta. Her mind was racing with a thousand questions. “Hey Divya, hop in,” she heard a voice beam out of a silver SUV. Vidya Balan was driving from her home in Bandra to her doctor’s clinic in Chembur and she’d promised to meet with this young girl on the way. She spent the next 45 minutes convincing the girl of how she must pursue her dream of becoming an actor.“Go for it,” Vidya said. “There are too many people who will tell you that you can’t do it. There will be too many times you will wonder if this was a mistake. But it’s all going to be worth it,” she said. Ten years ago, when Vidya started her career in cinema, there were few people she could bank on. Advice was mostly unsolicited and not always accurate. The industry hinged more on nepotism than today, and there wasn’t much place for a middle-class South Indian girl who had nothing to show except her flair for performance. Now when she sees young girls who aspire to be like her, Vidya has only one thing to say, “Just believe it will happen, and it will.” Six years ago, that July night happened. Today when I sit down with Vidya in her vanity van as she preps to turn into Durga Rani Singh, her film character in Kahaani 2, she asks, “How’s your acting going?” It is this ability of Vidya’s to be both mentor and heroine that sets her apart from her contemporaries. Directors now write roles for her, yet her feet stay firmly planted in reality. In Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh, which releases in theatres on December 2nd, she teams up once again with Sujoy Ghosh (director of Kahaani) to play her darkest character yet. An interview:

How’ve you been?

I’m good. I’m very good in fact. Last year was not great in terms of my health, which is why I took a break for a few months. I wanted to keep working, but it felt like I was going against my own body and mind. I had to slow down and understand what was going wrong, which a lot of times is considered ‘giving up’. But every average individual needs to pause and rejuvenate. I don’t see why it should be any different for actors.

Kahaani (2012) came at a crucial time in your career. Is the anticipation for the sequel nerve-wracking?

I don’t know, actually. Kahaani was a lot simpler as a film and Vidya Bagchi was far less complex than Durga Rani Singh. You thought she was a certain person, it just turned out her story was not what she fed you. But with Durga Rani Singh, you just don’t know who she is. Is she a mother, is she a murderer, or is she both? You don’t know. She wants to be unnoticed, and so she’s susceptible to suspicion. So as a character it was a lot more exciting for me than the first film. In terms of treatment and story, you are constantly treading that fine line between what is and what could be.

So she isn’t really black or white like most of the characters you have played?

No, she isn’t. We all have things about ourselves that people don’t know of. Sometimes we ourselves don’t know what we are capable of. A friend of mine once told me that he had a colleague who was a foreign national who sat right behind him at work. One day there was a news story that there was this foreign national guy who was convicted of murdering, butchering and preserving human bodies in the fridge and he turned out to be that guy. My friend would wake up in a cold sweat for nights thinking he had had lunches, shared smokes with this guy. Similarly with Durga Rani Singh. She lives in the hills and that keeps her invisible. The darkness she carries within her isn’t really palpable, but it is there.

Does Sujoy allow you that space between being Vidya and the part he has written for you, considering he knows you so well?

(Laughs) It’s a very organic process between him and me of understanding and playing with what he has written on paper. It’s natural growth for both of us. The good thing about Sujoy is that he recognises and is most comfortable with the quirks of a person, and that is very interesting. That reflects in his characters. Nothing is super-imposed in this film, whether it’s humour, whether it’s emotion, which keeps it all so real. Do I get along any better with him? I am not sure. It’s been nine years and I have not had such a tumultuous relationship even in any of my relationships. We understand each other very well as actor and director, and therefore we bring out the best in each other while working. But as people, we bring out the worst in each other. He’d be happiest if I gave his films priority over everything else at every given point of time in life.

Is there a dark self you battle with?

I think so. It’s about channelling that self, right. It’s about discovering that and being okay with it because that’s when you stop judging yourself. You always choose that which is within you that you want to hold onto, and what you want to transform. We are never just this or that. As human beings, we are constantly evolving. It’s the most intense process of life, and even more so as an actor because the more I recognise myself, the more I can empathise with another character.

Parineeta released in 2005. After so many years of being an actor, are you still able to retain empathy or connect with a role as much as you did when you started off?

Yes, absolutely. When do things start getting boring or mundane? It’s when you are not evolving, and looking at everything from the same space. For me, I feel like there is so much changing, I can hardly cope with it at times. I feel like I am not the same person I was last year. I am someone who thinks a lot. People often tell me, ‘Why do you think so much?’ But it’s just who I am. I enjoy getting to know people, knowing their stories, and I am constantly processing and analysing. Human behaviour interests me the most. When you’re dealing with so many people on a constant basis, it’s a crash course in human behaviour. That’s what makes me the actor I am, for good or for bad.

But weren’t you a recluse as a kid?

I still am. I have always been a home body. I was a fat child and I loved the company of older people. My sister’s friends were much easier to get along with than people my age. My mother would have to push me out of the house, to play some sport, or just to play with other kids. I never wanted to. I’d make up my own stories. I was forced to read, my sister was a voracious reader and my mum really believed that that would open up our minds. So I would read loudly to irritate them and they’d be like, ‘Okay, okay now don’t read anymore.’ I was happy being by myself and I still am. There’s a part of me that’s extremely social and likes to be with people, and yes, there’s a part of me that craves to be by myself.

Has marriage come in the way of that?

In fact, I have learnt to value myself even more after marriage. Marriage is the biggest challenge to anyone’s individual identity. We have been fed these notions, ‘two bodies and one soul’ and all of that, but invariably it’s the woman who has to give more, and that’s what we have been conditioned to do. Whether or not we like it, we have been conditioned to believe that we are the givers and we have to keep giving and we have to keep adjusting. It’s only been four years since I have gotten married, and in my limited understanding, it works when you retain your identity. It’s not when you are doh jism and ek jaan, it’s when you’re doh jism and doh jaan.

Reshma’s character in The Dirty Picture (2011) broke stereotypes and celebrated this individual identity you are talking about. But that wave did not hold up…

For me, my films have always given voice to something I was grappling with or going through or coping with personally. Even with films of mine that didn’t work, I’ve never doubted the integrity of the part I played (like Bobby Jasoos (2014) or Ghanchakkar (2013)). The Dirty Picture happened at a time when I had to come to terms with my body, and that was extremely liberating. I’ve finally accepted who I am and now I am discovering there are two or maybe many more people that live in my head. Be it the widow in Ishqiya (2010) or this super-shrewd wife in Kahaani, all these parts give voice to all my angst as a woman. Therefore, what I connect with changes from time to time.

Are you happy with the parts being written for women now?

Yes. During Rekha or Shabana Azmi’s time, these roles were fewer and it was age that defined them in so many ways. I am 37 today and I get so many parts that are being written for women like me. Writers who are writing parts that reflect the women around us, real women. I think we should celebrate that, because it’s just the beginning.

Did you choose to play the writer Kamala Das because she is so liberated and forthright?

Again, the fact that I don’t know whether she is living in her head or not. She wrote really explicitly, and more about her personal life. But a lot of people say it was in her head, that these were just stories. It was fiction that she personalised but it was not her personal story that was fictionalised. She was extremely liberated, she spoke about sexuality, her body, coming of age, about ageing, about the desires of a woman, about everything with brutal honestly. I am just vicariously living that life through her.

Do you miss the young teenager who was inconspicuous and did all the acting just for herself perhaps?

I think about her sometimes. I started when I was 15. It was never easy and I was never easy on myself. I don’t dwell on the failures I’ve had. I feel like it is only we who limit ourselves in our heads. If you’re asking me if I miss going to Juhu beach and eating, no I don’t. Even today, I am always looking for some answers or finding a vent through the film. And as long as I’m looking, I think I should be okay.

Hamari Adhuri KahaniIshqiyaKahaaniThe Dirty PictureVidya Balan