Sailing through

Sailing through

Nandita Das has turned down two Bollywood extravaganzas. Though she has nothing against mainstream cinema, she is game for something less cliched, she tells Rajeev Masand

Clearly, Das has an opinion. On almost everything. But that's not surprising, considering she's had a fairly liberal upbringing. For that, she thanks her parents, Delhi-based painter Jatin Das and her writer mother. They allowed Das to indulge her passions all along, and didn't once force her to enter an area she had no interest in. Always inclined towards performing arts, especially in school, it's for her parents she had a wide social circle and was exposed to theatre and art from an early age.

So, Das learnt Odissi for about 12 years. So much so that she thought she would become a professional dancer. Her first stint with acting began when she joined Safdar Hashmi's street theatre group, Jan Natya Manch, "but street theatre is not so much about acting, as it is about the issue involved." Still, Das stayed with the group for six years,until she began working in theatre with the likes of Barry John, Habib Tanvi and M K Raina. In the midst of all this, she graduated in geography ("I chose the subject because we had a great teacher") and was at a confusing juncture as far as her Masters was concerned.

Taking a year off to teach a class of fifth-graders at the Rishi Valley School, near Bangalore, Das realised she wanted to spend the rest of her life working among people. So, while on one hand she dabbled in television, including a serial with Muzaffar Ali ("but mostly stuff related to women's issues"), on the other she decided that she would do her MA in social work. "I worked briefly in an organisation for women called Ankur, and then switched to an organisation for children called Alarippu. At Alarippu, the purpose was to promote education, make learning fun for children and teaching fun for teachers, she recounts. Simultaneously, Das also conducted workshops with primary school teachers and rural children.

Her first film assignment camein 1987. It was a small yet interesting role in Prakash Jha's relatively unknown film Pariniti, which, like her second film in 1995, Ek Thi Gunja, died out soon after it did the festival rounds and premiered on television. "In a way, Fire was my first starring role," she giggles, surprised at her own choice of words. Next up, she featured in Govind Nihalani's Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa and Mehta's 1947: Earth, and even took on a non-speaking, walk-on part in Nagesh Kukunoor's Rockford. Among her forthcoming films are Water, Rakesh Mehra's commercial debut opposite Amitabh Bachchan, a film on AIDS called Ek Alag Mausam written by Mahesh Dattani, and a real-life story of a gang-rape victim directed by Jagmohan Mundhra. Her next release, would probably be Shyam Benegal's Hari Bhari.

She collects her thoughts when you ask her why she turned down the female lead in the Aamir Khan-starrer, Mann. "I know Aamir was very keen that I do the film, andbecause we're good friends I went along and met with the film-makers who narrated the entire subject to me. For some reason, the way I was imagining the film just didn't match their version of it. So, I thought it would better not to take up something that you don't see in the same light as the director," she explains. Once again, she auditioned reluctantly for Lagaan on Aamir's insistence, but says "the director thought there was too much intelligence in my eyes."

Das, who says has no regrets about turning down the films, prefers to work on interesting films in any language instead. Having already featured in a Kannada, a Malayalam and a Bengali film, the actress says language should never be a barrier. "For an actor, how does it matter what language you are working in? As long as your role is convincing, little else is important," she says.

As for Bollywood fare, Das reveals she has met film-makers like Subhash Ghai and David Dhawan socially. "They've seen my work and have complimented me on it,"she adds. "And though I don't want to do the typical Hindi movie, I'm game for anything that is well-written and makes sense," she declares.