`I'm primarily a cinema actor'
MITA KAPUR
| A freewheeling chat with Shabana Azmi about cinema, feminism and identities. |
An emotional storm: Shabana on stage for "Kaifi Aur Main".
AS she sat on the stage, reading, narrating, enacting the lives of Kaifi and Shaukat Azmi in "Kaifi aur Main", Shabana's eyes lit up with love, with pride, now amused at the romance, now brimming with the pain of loss. The actress and the daughter merged.
To live through every performance of "Kaifi aur Main" must stir up an emotional storm. "Yes and no. It's not just a play to me. There are too many personal moments. But we've been fortunate to get overwhelming reactions. That for me overcomes the turmoil I go through each time."
A chilly winter night on the terrace of Tablu, a pub-cum-art gallery in Jaipur, Shabana was concerned making sure everyone ate and drank. Curious and friendly, a long day didn't deter her.
Theatre vs. cinema
"Theatre gives the terror of failing. In a live performance, anything can go wrong. In cinema, you can't tell lies in a close-up shot, so both have their challenges. Theatre is something I grew up with. I was four or five months old when my mother would strap me to her back to go for her rehearsals at Prithvi. I grew up with the smell of grease paint in my nostrils. It's a part of who I am, but in the actual discipline of acting, I'm a cinema actor primarily."
Theatre in India has a series of question marks against it. "The main problem is we have very little original writing. There's no money in this profession. Audiences aren't willing to pay, finding it much cheaper to take a family of five for a movie. This doesn't allow for serious professional work going in."
Though in cinema we are at an interesting point of development, "for actors, this a good time. The true crossover film will come from independent cinema, but the trouble is finance. Why is the government promoting mainstream cinema in festivals like Cannes?"
Amitabh's broken age barriers in the industry. Roles for women have been defined but "I've been singularly lucky. The best roles of my career came to me after the age of 40, which in itself extends the whole lifespan of a female actor in cinema. `Morning Raaga', `15 Park Avenue', `God Mother', `Tehzeeb', are roles to die for."
What about cinema reflecting reality and also contributing to changing that reality, like "Munna Bhai" and "Range De Basanti"? "To expect cinema to bring about direct change is being idealistic. I don't think you can see a film of Gandhi and come out behaving like him. All art has the capacity to create a climate of sensitivity in which it's possible for change to occur."
Balancing films, theatre and politics, Shabana doesn't regard them as separate. "These are just various regions to express the same concerns, whether it's housing for economically weaker sections, women's rights or religious fundamentalism, it all comes from one world".
How do class-oriented Marxist theories overlap with gender issues and feminism? "Feminism is, in many ways, a part of Marxist thought. It talks about equal opportunity to all, irrespective of class, caste, gender. Feminism has, by sheer experience, realised there are possibly distant voices that can offer solutions to find that space." Brand Feminism from the West will not work in India. "Initially our women's movement was inspired by the West but we've developed our own indigenous form, which is more realistic and valid for our culture."
Does that make our women's movement anywhere close to satisfactory, one wonders. "Yes, we're moving quite satisfactorily. India lives in several centuries simultaneously. Indians live back-to-back in the 18th, 19th and 21st centuries. To encapsulate all contradictions that stem from a multi-cultural society isn't easy." Cinema too seen changes in its portrayal of women. "There was the protagonist of `Main Chup Rahungi' in the 1960s that has changed but the change is within the stereotypes. In the 1980s there was a spate of avenging angels ... we had the Rambos and the Rambolinas! But women, whether rural or urban, continue to be largely invisible."
Gaze, not gender
Shabana's roles in Benegal's films were of strong, well-defined characters, the male director not withstanding.
"It's nothing to do with the director's gender, it's the gaze. We need a more feminine gaze, not necessarily a feminist gaze. I find it strange that women directors don't like to be referred as `women', I'd hope the fact they are women reflects in their gaze. Not that a woman can't make a murder mystery or a thriller but the way she looks at it should, I hope, be different."
What Shabana would like to leave behind as a legacy amuses her?
"I don't take myself seriously, I'm more busy doing than thinking about who I am. My primary identity is being a woman and then an Indian. We talk of women empowerment in terms of education, economic independence but nobody talks of health as a factor of empowerment. The number of pregnancy deaths in India in a week exceeds all of Europe's in a year and experts say 70 per cent of these deaths can be prevented. The government is at fault here."
No boring interviews
Interrupted by a BBC correspondent, she flung fire. "I won't give boring biographical interviews, `what is my favourite so and so is....' just remember I've been in the industry for 35 years, talk to me about ideas, issues... that is interesting."
Shabana finds it difficult to "fix an identity". It's free flowing; at different times, different aspects of the personality and identity get heightened.
"What worries me is the concerted effort being made to compress identity into narrow confines of religion. You `become' a Christian, Muslim, Hindu at the cost of all other identities. India's truth is our composite culture. A Kashmiri Hindu and a Kashmiri Muslim have more in common than a Kashmiri Muslim and a Kerala Muslim. Despite a common religion, cultural identity is much stronger than religious identity. The greatest freedom India allows is a pluralistic identity. We're grappling with multiple and shifting identities in today's world as it is."
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