"I should not be here," says Richa Chadha. She's played an old woman, a sister, a bhabhi, a goondi. "I should not be here with my attractive husband (Ali Fazal, actor), without following a single rule of Bollywood," she says. At 37, she is not only one of the shining stars of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, but also a producer of the Sundance Film Festival hit, Girls Will Be Girls. The St Stephen's College graduate remembers Dibakar Banerjee, who directed her in her debut Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008). Richa had portrayed the aspirational girlfriend Dolly, and Banerjee had told her: 'I hope the industry will be kind to you'. And it was, she says, despite making mistakes. Having seen her career since 2008, one can safely say she will be here for a long time. "Women have ceased to be defined by their age," she says. Indeed, her role in Heeramandi is testament to that, playing a tawaif who lives in the delusion that her nawabi paramour will marry her. In a heartbreaking dance, as she bids goodbye to a gathering where she is invited to celebrate his marriage to someone else, Chadha puts in decades of kathak learning, raw pain and pure trauma. When she exits the mehfil with a laugh which is a cross between a sob and a hiccup, it is a moment to watch. Of the men in the industry, Chadha says it is very awkward to see a 60-year-old man in chapri (street) clothes—a mesh vest, jacket and jewellery. "It's not about dressing your age. Snoop Dogg dresses like that and he is 52. But he dresses to his personality. Not so here. I find it a bit cringe." There's nothing cringe about Chadha who is authentic to the core. And as she awaits a new home production, an Ali Fazal-Richa Chadha collaboration, their baby, more power to her.

Richa Chadha

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