A TIME TO ACT... AND TO REACT


10 June 2005

Actress and social activist Shabana Azmi is as passionate about social and political issues as she is about acting. ‘I grew up in an atmosphere where my parents believed art should be an instrument for social change,’ she tells V RADHIKA

As always, the audience was mesmerised. But not just with her on screen presence. Shabana Azmi left Torontonians spellbound with her wit, intellect and eloquence at an interactive session in the city recently. The actress, whose riveting performance continues to enthral cinegoers, was in Toronto for the screening of her film Morning Raga at the ReelWorld Film Festival and also to receive the Reelworld Award of Excellence in recognition of her contribution to the independent film industry.

She flew in from Mumbai via Washington to a team of waiting journalists, claiming to be utterly jetlagged. But her radiance belied any trace of fatigue or the ravages of age. The 54-year-old actress and social activist is as passionate about social and political issues as she is about acting. The only Indian actress to have won a record five national awards, Azmi firmly believes that art should be an instrument for social change. A belief that can be traced to her upbringing in a leftist family. “I grew up in an atmosphere where my parents believed art should be an instrument for social change,” she says. Daughter of renowned poet Kaifi Azmi and noted actress Shaukat Azmi, Shabana’s childhood was spent in a commune where the only private space the family had was a small room. She credits her parents for being an influence and that, she says, "has helped me shape up as an actress, a woman and a human being."

Incidentally, Shabana’s public life did not begin simultaneously with her acting career. Her initial acting years were spent solely under the arclights. But then, she says, “there comes a point in a artist’s life when it is impossible not to react.” And that point came with two of her award-winning films Arth and Paar.

Arth was released in 1983 and the film’s unconventional ending — where the wife (Shabana) refuses to return to her errant husband — struck a chord with many women and she says, “After Arth, suddenly I had hordes of women walking into my house expecting me to resolve all their marital conflicts.”

Soon after, she signed up for a sweeper’s role in Paar, and in an attempt to get under the skin of her character she used to observe a woman who worked on the sets and later befriended her. The lady, who was a slum dweller invited Shabana home and that visit mortified the actress. While the total lack of amenities appalled her, the outpouring of affection also humbled her. “She (the slum dweller) was so generous in spite of the fact that she had nothing. I felt that if I did not do anything to improve the lot of people like her it would be a travesty of the trust she had placed in me.”

And the moment for concrete action made itself available when the Mumbai authorities launched a slum demolition drive. Shabana joined the movement against demolition and since then there has been no looking back.

She is also involved in helping the villagers of Mijwaan, a village her father Kaifi Azmi adopted during his lifetime. "My father was a Marxist and an advocator for change. Often, when communalism and riots raised their ugly heads and tore parts of India, I would often get frustrated and question his ideologies. And, he would reiterate his stand: "When you are working for change, the change often may not happen in our lifetime, but what is important is your contribution towards it and the long strides you take to make it happen. And today, I back his dream for a socially-just society," says Shabana. In 1988, she was awarded India’s highest honour Padmashri for her humanitarian work.

A passionate advocate for the rights of the disadvantaged, she was nominated for a six-year term to the Indian parliament. The tenure ended in 2003, which also means that now she would have more time to devote to her acting career. “Yes, I definitely have more time for films now and am looking at a lot of scripts and upcoming projects," she says, flashing her charming smile.

She believes that like all things, cinema has gone completely global and is all praise for young upcoming filmmakers. "Modern films are being made by young filmmakers who have an exciting view to life and tell their stories through youthful eyes and perhaps a different perspective and I welcome working with new and upcoming filmmakers who have great stories to tell."

The Indian cine scene, according to her, has also witnessed a change. “At the moment it's happy time in India because all kinds of films are made at all kinds of budgets. Of course, there is this pressure to make very lightweight, popcorn kind of a movie ... but that's fine as well, as long as it creates space for films that are different. What is interesting is that actors are getting braver and more courageous and doing films that might not necessarily be commercially successful, we have discovered that there is no Pan-Indian audience ... that it is not necessary for a film to find acceptance in a village as well as in metropolitan cities ... It is becoming possible to make niche films and then make that commercially viable. So I think that is very liberating,” says the actress who studied at India’s Film and Television Institute after graduating from Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College.

Though she started touring with her mother’s stage troupe when she was three, it was in college that she realised she “enjoyed acting” and decided to pursue it as a career. In a career spanning nearly three decades, she has acted in almost 60 films from commercial blockbusters like Parvarish, Amar, Akbar Anthony to art house films whose list is endless. Some of her recent films include Fire and Godmother. The latter, in which she essays the role of a mafia don fetched her the best national actress award.

She has also acted in international productions including Madame Souzatska, City of Joy and In Custody. The actress, par excellence, has infused every role with her unique sensibility where she becomes the part. This obviously comes with the desire to be a perfectionist. To play the role of Swarnalata, a Carnatic singer in Morning Raga for instance, Shabana took music lessons. "I was initially apprehensive about the role but after a lot of training from Ranjini Ramakrishnan, who also plays a violinist friend in the film, I was confident of playing the role. I felt that if I got the body language right, everything else would fall in place,” she says, and adds with a laugh, “we even practiced and rehearsed in between my parliament sessions and meetings in Delhi."

About Morning Raga, she says, "The film is a metaphor for the two Indias that exist side by side. India is a modern, vibrant and young country where several centuries co-exist at the same time. It is the only country where you can find the 17th and the 21st century living together, side by side. The traditional and the contemporary, the old and the new, the rural and the urban and Morning Raga bridges the gap between the western and eastern cultures.”

The firebrand activist in her bristles at the west’s conception of India as simply a “mystical, spiritual place.” This view, she says, is reflective of a “patronising” attitude. In the same vein she adds she also hates the term Bollywood. “It is a pejorative label and suggests that all of Indian cinema is a pale imitation of Hollywood which is unfair to a country that makes the largest number of films in a year in the world,” she says.

An actress, who is always willing to push the envelope, Shabana is the only Asian actor ever to be honoured with a retrospective of her films at Lincoln Centre at the 40th New York Film Festival.

Ever ready to experiment with new characters, Shabana has wrapped up two films: Waterborne and 15 Park Avenue. Directed by Ben Rekhi, an Indo-American, Waterborne revolves around American politics post the 9-11 situation and unfolds the story of a terrorist group trying to sabotage the water system in Los Angeles. Shabana plays a Sikh woman. About her role, she says, “I play the slightly racist owner of a convenience store. The film is about a terrorist threat to the water system of Los Angeles. I immediately hike the price of water much to the horror of my son. My character also doesn't like the fact that her son is going out with an American girl. She then becomes a victim of a hate crime because of raising the price of water.”

Aparna Sen's 15 Park Avenue explores the relationship of two sisters, a physics teacher played by Shabana and her schizophrenic sister played by Konkana Sen. "The film,” she says, “dwells on mental illness, a subject that has been superficially tackled in Indian films so far.”