Some call her the new Smita Patil. Her striking dusky looks, coupled with her obvious acting talents and her instinctive gravitation towards strong roles, have made her an Indian arthouse favourite.

            She shot to international fame through her debut performance in Deepa Mehta’s controversial film Fire where she more than held her own opposite the veteran Shabana Azmi. Cementing her reputation with successive strong performances in other films, such as Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa, she made her mark in particular opposite Aamir Khan and Rahul Khanna in Earth. In a brief career spanning a mere 14 films to date, Nandita Das has carved out a name for herself as a daring and sensitive actress who is also a committed social activist. She was in Karachi recently to attend the 1st KaraFilm Festival and the Asian premiere of her latest release Bawandar, a story about a low-caste rural woman fighting against a corrupt patriarchal system out to deny her dignity.  After the festival ended, Pakistani filmmakers Nadia Jamil, Marina Khan, Mehreen Jabbar and Hasan Zaidi sat down with Nandita Das for a wide-ranging and free-wheeling conversation...

            Nadia: You have been talking to filmmakers here about collaborative projects.  How inclined are you to do something like that?

            Nandita: Any average person who wants peace, anyone who realises how pointless these damn wars are which are glorified, would feel the same way.  For example, the Kargil War was really glorified in India and some actors also participated in this glorification.  I stayed aloof, clear, even though some people called me anti-national and unpatriotic.  But since I was not in touch with any forum and had never been to Pakistan, a collaboration was just a thought.  After the Nimrana Conference that was conducted by South Asians for Human Rights – of which I am a part and which was about people coming together, I really started thinking about it.  Then I went to Lahore and met people there.  Once things become more possible, more concrete, obviously one starts to think about it more.  And coming back this time, especially being part of the festival and meeting more people who are in this field and feel strongly about it, the feeling gets stronger.  That’s why, I said to you that even if a film is not happening, even if theatre is not happening, let’s do something on TV.  May be we can start with one of the private channels, maybe just as a rehearsal to see what the feedback of people at large is, what the work ethics are, how we learn from each other and see how it really works.  Let’s just do a short thing, perhaps only four days work… at least let’s begin somewhere.  I truly feel cultural exchanges are the best catalysts for the normalisation of ties.  They don’t have the weight of politics or even human rights.

            Hasan: You have been involved with lots of human rights causes, such as the Safdar Hashmi Trust.  As an actor do you think there is a responsibility you must shoulder?

            Nandita:  All this involvement was there much before I decided to become an actor.  I come from a family which is heavily into the arts but is not political at all.  So I didn’t have any political understanding, or rather, I didn’t grow up with any political discussions at home.  Both my parents’ understanding of things, even secularism, is much more at an emotional level.  It’s like dost dost hain – which caste, creed or religion they belong to, has never played a role.

            It was only when I joined Safdar Hashmi’s group in my first year of college at Delhi University and we began doing street plays and started discussing politics that I started to understand the political ramifications of things and realised that there is politics in everything –  women, education, people, countries, whatever.  When I was performing with Safdar Hashmi’s group in communities, people would sometimes come and tell me how they related to what I was acting out, and I realised how protected and cocooned we are in our own little worlds.

            After I did my BA in geography, I took a year off.  I travelled, and I taught in a wonderful school set up by the philosopher J. Krishnamurthy and then realised that I wanted to do my Masters in Social Work.  So, one thing led to another.  Acting happened much later.  For me acting is just a shift in the medium.  It really wasn’t me wanting to be an actress.  It was just that I enjoy acting and have so much fun.

            Mehreen: Had you ever studied acting before you went into films?

            Nandita: No, I had done a little bit of theatre and television.  But again, only subjects that I felt very, very strongly about.  I never really thought of things only from an actor’s point of view.  Even after Fire,  Earth and Govind Nihalani’s Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa, for the first three years I didn’t want to be an actress.  I continued my work with women and children.  And if in the middle some interesting projects came along, I would do them.  But it was more of an interest than a profession.  It’s only in the last year that I have been getting a wider choice of roles and I feel, okay, now I am an actress.  But the actress in me now says, ‘Why am I doing the same kind of stuff?’ I think when you get drawn to certain things instinctively, similar projects keep coming to you.

            Mehreen: Do you think that you have become typecast?

           Nandita: Yeah.  I have got typecast, but I am responsible for it too.             Because I instinctively got drawn to projects that would say what I wanted            to say.

            Nadia: What issues were you interested in?

            Nandita: They varied.  I have done a film on AIDS, I have done a film like             Fire, I have done a film on Partition, on rape…

            Marina: What would you want to do next?

           Nandita: I really have not been so ambitious as to think, ‘What next?’ I really never planned anything.  One thing just led to another.  I used to dance; I learnt Odissi for several years but never wanted to be a dancer.  Music is my first love.  I would have liked to be a singer, but I was a very hesitant singer.  I learnt it for a while.  I wish I was a singer.  I think it’s such a beautiful art.

           Nadia: You sound like you don’t plan for the future.           

           Nandita: I dream a lot though!

          Nadia: Do you see yourself as an actress now or do you see yourself perhaps moving towards directing, or even moving away from this medium as well to express your views in another medium?

           Nandita: Well, I go through phases. There are phases when I just don’t want to be an actress and I want nothing to do with films.  I think it is a very, very self-obsessed profession.  It really is, I mean all these interviews… I have just lived that much of a life and have only done that much work – but have to repeat the same crap again and again.  I remember when I was in Gujrat during the earthquake, I felt so guilty about being an actress.  I wished I were something more useful.  I grew up with a kind of pompousness that I didn’t want to be a doctor or an engineer.  But at that point in Gujrat I wished I were a doctor.  I feel my work is the most useless work in many ways.  So, often I don’t see myself as an actress five years from now.  My actual dream is to start a wonderful school somewhere far away.  That can happen in two years, 10 years or never.  But that’s something I really enjoy doing and I have been wanting to do that since the days I was a teacher.  But there are also moments, like when I am acting, then I want be a director.  When I see a film or when I am on the sets my mind works more as a director than as an actor.  This should not dissuade you from taking me seriously as an actress, however.  I am reasonably focused on acting as well.

            Marina: But in this art, I feel that you do give lot of pleasure to people, you bring them out of their limited worlds…

            Nandita: I am not saying that it makes no contribution to society.  But comparitively speaking, I don’t know how many films have changed my life.  If you really did monumental work, where people came together to create something fantastic, then maybe yes.  But half of the films I do – not even half, nine-tenths of the films that I do –  are a racket.  They’re not about saying something important, there is no soul to them.  Filmmakers know how to approach me, they know what is going to work with me.  If they talk about issues, I know, they are manipulating me.

            Mehreen: Should we stop making films and not let the general public have the pleasure of watching them?

            Nandita: No, not at all.  But I don’t know whether the kind of films I do give them pleasure…

            I hardly provide entertainment.  Mujhe tau gaalian parhti hain ke, ‘you always do serious stuff.  Why can’t you just dance and jump around and have fun?’

            Marina:  What kind of audiences come to see the films you do?

            Nandita: The audiences are limited and really make only that much of a difference.  Perhaps I am sounding terribly cynical.  But actually I am going through a phase of absolute disillusionment.  Yet, when I was recently doing Mani Rathnam’s film, I was having a great time.  I was on a high and I really thought everything was fabulous.  Everything isn’t black and white.  Both things exist.  If the work is good and interesting, it’s uplifting.  But If I do a project where I feel there isn’t that kind of honesty and sincerity and I am not enjoying the process, it brings about a certain negativity.  I am selfish and I don’t want to corrode myself.

            Hasan: You said earlier that there are certain films that you regret doing? Why? 

            Nandita:  When people come up to you with interesting subjects or powerful themes, they say, ‘It has really troubled me, ever since I read it, I just can’t get it out of my head,’ and similar stuff.  So you think this is an important issue, maybe it can find a place in this film, this person feels so passionately about it.  But when you are doing the film, suddenly it’s ‘Yaar, yahan gaana tau dalna parray ga’ [We have to insert a song here].  Or you realise it’s your scene and it’s your line and it’s going somewhere else because ‘he’ is the big hero or ‘they’ are feeling threatened that you are getting to be more powerful in this scene or in the film. So, it becomes ‘Let’s now change it to that, let’s give her lines to him, let’s just reshoot certain things.’  There are a whole lot of things that happen…

            I also did a film in which the director and the cameraman never came to shoot. There were only an assistant director and assistant cameraman on the sets.  I asked, ‘What’s happening?’ And they responded, ‘We’re really sorry but the director is doing four films at the same time.’  So he was on other sets, and the action director filled in for him.  I never quite understood it.  What about the director’s sensibility?  I mean, how can the same dance director do David Dhawan’s film, Subhash Ghai’s, Shyam Benegal’s and Mani Rathnam’s film at the same time and  project four different sensibilities.  So there have been various such things.

            Mehreen:  You are often considered an art-house actor only. Is that a fair perception or are you willing to do commercial films?”

            Nandita: This is only the 500th time that I am talking about this art and commercial debate, which is bullshit.  I am probably, whether I like it or not, more an art-house actress.  But that is by default, not by design. That’s just the way it has been. With Aks or withPitah – this new film I have done which is directed by Mahesh Manjreker, who has also madeVaastav  and Astitva – for me there is no shifting to ‘commercial cinema’ from ‘art cinema.’  But just because Pitah  has Sanjay Dutt and Jackie Shroff and Om Puri in it, people think it’s ‘commercial.’  Conversely, because I am in it, they also think they [Dutt, Shroff et al] are doing an art film.  So, this is perception; there is no shift.  I am also doing films in other languages, and even that is looked down upon.  People say ‘You do these Kannada, Tamil, Bengali and Gujrati films, why can’t you at least do Hindi films if you are not doing mainstream films.’  But there are stories and talents and people in other parts of the country as well! For example Mottuka, the Tamil film you screened, was one of the best films of your festival.  So, what is this thing about mainstream, art, regional and Hindi cinema? These categories, I think, are bullshit.  There are only good and bad films.

            Nadia:  Who is your favourite director?

            Nandita: There is no ‘favourite’ director.

            Nadia: Okay, who have you enjoyed working with the most?    

            Nandita:When you name one director, you cut down a whole lot of people who are young and are doing their first films…

            Nadia: Then what are your favourite projects?

            Nandita: Favourite is difficult to say. But what I’ve really enjoyed working             on was a Kannada film called Devede.  That was a wonderful film.  Four            friends got together, pooled their money, and made this film about a brother            and sister in a slum and it went to various festivals.  Also it’s one of the few            Kannada films that did well at the box-office.  So it was kind of interesting            to do well in both areas.  I enjoyed working with Deepa Mehta in Fire.  I            enjoyed working with Mani Rathnam…

            I have enjoyed myself but I don’t think I have done something that is really            ‘Wow!’ ‘Wow!’  When the story is good, when your role is good, when            the director is good, you enjoy the process, and you enjoy what you finally            see on the screen. That has not happened yet.”

            Nadia: That will happen with us!

            Nandita: Hopefully.  But jaldi karna or I will quit acting.

            Mehreen: Okay, what do you think of the new kind of Indian cinema that is emerging? What, for example, do you think of Lagaan?

            Nandita: Lagaan  is a good film, but I am not all that passionate about it.  I mean it’s wonderful, it’s a clean film, a feel-good film, a very politically correct film,  a clever commercial film.  But I think Dil Chahta Hai  is a great effort.  At one point there were just one kind of films being made such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, so it was refreshing to see something different being made.  What I like about Dil Chahta Hai is that it’s just a slice of life, there is no big problem in it.

            Hasan: Well, that is a pitfall for some filmmakers, especially first-time filmmakers. They start off with too huge a concept, and try to put everything in it. And then it becomes such a big issue, they never get it right. Sometimes it is better to start small…

            Nandita: That’s what I want to do, if at all I do my first film.  It would be a very small film, intimate and ‘handle-able.’  Something that comes out of your life and your own confusions and… I have thought of the story actually.

            Mehreen: Okay, now tell us truthfully, what you thought of the KaraFilm Festival?

            Nandita: It’s been wonderful.  Firstly because it’s young people, young blood. Secondly because all the people are broadly attached to films as directors, writers, journalists, designers.  And then, because it’s been put together by friends, there is a different kind of enthusiasm to it.  I have really felt like part of the host team rather than a guest.

            I have already asked if I can be your Indian counterpart to get you good films and get a broader selection of films and people, coordinate stuff from there.

            Hopefully, I will come every year, whether you call me or not.  I would like to come just as a friend of the festival