I am co-creating the art show BeautyFull with Sahil Mane. All my work for the show can be found here.
Interview: Shraddha Kapoor /
December 2014: For someone who’s only ever wanted to face the camera, the success of the past couple of years has been a dream come true. Shraddha Kapoor is riding the wave and soaking in all the love.
The cover of Women's Health.
I take in the view as I wait for Shraddha on this sunny Sunday afternoon, watching waves hit Silver Beach from the Kapoors’ seventh floor apartment in Juhu, Mumbai. She breezes in soon—wearing a smile, a comfy deep blue tee, Aztec-print beige jammies and thick-rimmed black glasses—and settles into a sofa placed under a portrait of her father.
It may be an obvious question to the daughter of a famous actor, but I ask it anyway. And she says yes, to be in the movies was always, always the plan. Even as a little girl, she’d act, dance and dress up for functions at school… “In fact,” she breaks off animatedly mid-sentence, “you must see this.” On her phone, she shows me what is obviously an early nineties’ picture of a school play—kids all dressed in pseudo-adult outfits, bright lipstick and rouge—and there she is, signing an autograph! “I was playing Madhuri Dixit. A friend shared this photograph with me yesterday, and I was like ‘Oh My God!’”
Yet, she spent two years at Boston University, majoring in psychology. “When you hear so much of ‘tu badi hokar heroine hi banegi’ (‘you are only going to be an actress when you grow up’), you want to rebel and swim against the tide. But deep in my heart I always knew this is the only thing I wanted to do.”
A Rare Love
Back on summer break, she started getting film offers. “I thought: I can either start acting after three more years or I can just do it now.” Parents Shakti Kapoor and Shivangi Kolhapure were very supportive, though they still try to coax her in to finishing her course, she says, calling herself a “dropout” (an endearing and misplaced concern for a star, methinks). It was her third film, the 2013 blockbuster Aashiqui 2 that catapulted her into stardom, the first of her hat trick.
Seeing “love in people’s eyes” is the “biggest high”, and has changed her whole life. “Fans don’t want anything from you… It’s even beyond art, it’s about catering to that unconditional love.” Social media allows them to give her direct feedback, and pleasing them colours everything she does—from the movies and roles she chooses to the her sartorial choices.
Though her personal style is “jhalli” and “bohemian” with Goa pyjamas, track pants and maxi skirts (similar to her Ek Tha Villain character and as she’s presently dressed), “I’ve been told that I should not be like this.” She now feels the responsibility to make an effort, and lately, since Tanya Ghavri’s become her stylist, has started to enjoy and embrace fashion more.
Her fans have also loved her subtle presence in the spectacular Haider. She had no reservations, despite it being an ensemble cast, the lack of a traditional hero-heroine equation, her small role and Tabu’s legendary one. Vishal Bharadwaj is a “ball of love who makes you feel like you have something special, makes you feel alive,” she says.
Given that, in India, an actor’s screen and public image is what people actually think of them as a person, I wonder whether this need-to-please will prevent Shraddha from playing darker characters. “I would keep that at the back of my mind—are the people watching going to be happy seeing me like this? Upset? Interested? Surprised?”
A Chance to Dance
She’s now doing Remo D’Souza’s ABCD2, and having an absolute blast. “I’ve been waiting to do a film in which I can dance. None of my films till now have had any big dances, and suddenly I get a movie where I only dance!” Everyone on the cast but Varun Dhawan and her is a professional dancer. “We’ve just been added to the group, and hope we fit in.” When she first saw the steps, she was sure she wouldn’t be able to do them until the dancers told her that, when she entered the hall, she had to stop thinking, just feel it and do it.
For this movie, she’s been on a meal plan designed by celebrity trainer Marika Johansson, who formulates a diet based on your problem areas and preferences, and delivers meals for the day each morning. She tries, but loves food, especially fried food. “Jalebis with hot milk is deadly!”
Her dermatologist too tells her to eat healthy and not to pick her pimples (“I get tempted”). She’s going through a “really bad skin phase” (I count three measly pimples) and is working on improving her skin. She doesn’t do much: drinks water and green tea, washes with a face wash and moisturises.
A Fresh New Year
It’s been two incredible, hectic years for Shraddha, and “2014 has been too fast!” She spent last New Year’s asleep in bed. During the holiday season this year, she’s expecting to be in Las Vegas shooting a schedule for ABCD2. They wrap on the 30th and the whole crew may stay back—“Sounds like fun to me!”
The revived trend of all-round performers in the film industry, a la stage, is exciting to this girl who asserts, “I love dancing as much as I love acting as much as I love singing.” This New Year, the lights will only get brighter, the stage, bigger, for this girl with a dream.
An edited version of this interview was the cover story of Women's Health in December 2014. Read another interview of Shraddha Kapoor here.
Interview: Nargis Fakhri /
November 2014: Life has been an unplanned adventure for the fun and feisty Nargis Fakhri, and she’s making the most of it, looking at the bright side and spreading some of her abundant joie de vivre.
The cover of Women's Health.
Laughter. It was the first thing I heard as I walked across the length of Suresh’s studio to where Nargis Fakhri sat getting her make-up done. And it would be the last thing I would hear when I left her interacting with the stylists readying her for the first shot, my own sides aching from laughing for the most part of an hour and a half.
There are multiplicities in Nargis that one cannot know to expect, no matter how much you’ve read about her or stalked her on Twitter. As her gorgeous face blossoms with make-up in to one that has the hormones of the nation aflutter, she’s sitting there in an old tee riddled with holes, a cartoon tiger in front, its backside at the back—“This is how I normally dress,” she says.
“My friends say I’m an eight-year-old boy in a woman’s body.” While this eight-year-old is warm, keeps people around her in splits, does accents and finds farting really funny—“Like when you are in yoga class and someone bends down and lets out a fart, you just die laughing!”—Nargis is also abounding with deep wisdom, an empathetic old soul.
Travelling Beauty
This art major and a psychology minor from Queens, New York, started modeling so support her first love, travel. She has always enjoyed fashion, sees it as a way of creatively expressing ones individual self. She prefers androgynous styles, and, like a true New Yorker, the colour black is her favourite. “I don’t really like colourful stuff. Although everyone says ‘OMG, you look so beautiful in colour,’ I’m like, ‘Thanks, but I’d like the black dress please.’”
Looking good comes from the inside, for her, from genetics, of course, as well as from making healthy food and lifestyle choices. “I love fruits, sprouts and vegetables, and I prefer my veggies raw than cooked. I love eggs, have chicken once in a while.” She has cookies in her bag, leftover from what she bought the day before, that she brings out to share with the team. “Eat whatever you like in moderation. And get to know your body, certain foods don’t work with certain blood types.” Hers is AB, and modifying her diet according to her blood type has reduced the stomach problems she’s suffered all her life. She’s allergic to alcohol though she drinks on occasion, and is not supposed to have coffee (but she loves it and has it anyway) or too much meat protein.
She cooks her own food, preferring simple fried vegetables. “I eat asparagus, carrots and broccoli every single day, fried with a little bit of olive oil and salt.” Food is the secret to her skin too. “I do a peel once in a while, but haven’t had one in a long time because I just did an 11-day detox and my skin feels amazing. The truth is that you are what you what you put into your body.” She also works out, mixing an active life with lots of cardio, dancing, yoga and Zumba.
“Tai chi and yoga are great balancing exercises, because everything in life is about breath and we are not breathing properly. With fire breathing, you start burning calories just by breathing right.”
The Women's Health cover story.
The Journey of Life
She has spoken often of how surprising Rockstar was, how she had never been to India (she believes she has a karmic link to the country) or thought of being in the movies before she got the call to meet Imtiaz Ali for the role of Heer opposite Ranbir Kapoor. Who would have thought?
“Nobody would’ve thought. My friends back home laughed because all my life I was always ending up in random places meeting interesting people, and I think it’s just my openness to accepting whatever the universe gives me meant I didn’t deny anything. Why I’m here is because I took a chance.” Though when her mum saw Rockstar, she couldn’t stop laughing: “She said, ‘You should have done this when you were born, 'coz you were always yelling and crying an putting on a big show for nothing!’”
She travels across the world to shoot locations now, but “it’s not travelling, it’s work. Travelling is where you stay for three months, make friends and meet people, hang out and work a little bit.”
“I can be refined and classy when I need to be, and want to be a kid and have fun when I want to. If I saw a patch of grass I’d be like, come! I’d make everyone take their shoes off and roll around on the floor, which makes no sense to people but it is so liberating and rejuvenating.”
Finding Her Place
One can see why this free spirit who loves nature has had a tough time adjusting to the unexpected fame and lifestyle, and she’s only recently started to see the positive side and make peace with it. “A lot of introspection that has happened in the past three years, a big spiritual growth, and I’ve come to say: okay fine, everyone makes sacrifices for something that they want.”
Guided by a guru, she has become very spiritual, learning about alternative medicine, holistic healing, yoga, mediation, earthing. “I started realising that the reason people say I am so young-looking and have loving energy is because I am still always trying to connect with Mother Nature.”
As a child, what she wanted to do was to help people. “I’ve realised that you can use fame to bring awareness to different causes, and to inspire and motivate people.” She is harnessing an inner power, of having lived many lifetimes and a full life “that’s going to help me help myself and me to help others.”
A Means to an End
It could be the tiger (she was recently part of NDTV’s Save Our Tigers campaign) or children, the elderly or just regular people. She recently helped US-based Vishen Lakhiani, of the Mindvalley Foundation, with a campaign to raise 10 million dollars for education projects in developing nations.
This is one of the reasons she’s a quotable-quotes kind on social media, “cheesy” even, not this goofy a-joke-a-minute girl—“It’s a platform where I can be positive for other people.” (Besides, she feels that, culturally, people don’t get her personality here, and her humour doesn’t lend well to writing.) “It feels so good when you get an email saying, ‘You have changed my life and helped me’ or ‘I thought about suicide but you saved my life.’” She gets to meet a lot of people, and tries to be more positive than she is and as smiley as she can be, because the energy rubs off.
This is a lot of pressure. “Sometimes I’ll be having a bad day, or have my monthly woman stuff and people are harassing me for photos, and I just wanna say, ‘I am bleeding, leave me alone!’, but I try being the most positive I can be.”
She’s says this unselfconsciously, first qualifying that she doesn’t mean to be narcissistic: “I’m now that piece of coal that is going through the stress of being diamonised.” And I agree: with Nargis Fakhri, the best is yet to come.
NARGIS'S STORIES…
Some people tell her she should be a stand-up comic, but she believes no one gets her jokes.
On Romance
I’ve not had sex for god knows how long. How I wish my manager was a guy. It’s so funny because she and I are always working in the most beautiful, romantic places, having dinners together. One day we were walking through this beautiful hallway, perfect lighting, great mood, so I looked at her and asked, “Do you wanna hold hands?” She looked horrified and said, “No!” and ran off ahead of me. And I was like: “I am joking!”
On Housework
I love ironing. I have a weird fetish for ironing clothes, I iron my underpants and fold them nicely. I guess my maid gets upset because she then has nothing to do. She’s like, “Ma’am should I iron?” And I’m like, “No!” Then she looks at me really confused. Though I hate washing the dishes, and if I get married and I don’t live in India and have a maid, the guy has to wash the dishes. I will cook but I will not wash dishes; I will look at them and I will walk away. I have had dishes piled up for over a month with fungus growing on them, and I’m like, “I ain’t washing those.” And my then-boyfriend was like, “I ain’t either.” Eventually we had to do them together—I made him wash, I dried.
An edited version of this interview was the cover story of Women's Health in November 2014.
Interview: Ileana D'Cruz /
October 2014: She may be one of the South’s biggest superstars and rising fast in the Hindi film industry, yet Ileana D'Cruz keeps it real, knows what’s important and doesn’t sweat the small stuff.
The cover of Women's Health.
Fresh-faced Ileana D’Cruz is quick to bust the myth that looking superstar-good comes easy, even for someone as naturally pretty as her. She’s in the middle of a shot, music blaring, when I arrive at Studio 8 at Bandra’s Mehboob Studios, and I notice how uber particular she is about the angle she presents and how carefully she goes through the shots on Arjun’s computer. (“I have a big arse,” she tells me later.)
That beauty is beyond the skin-deep for Ileana, more than the make-up, cosmetics and the Photoshop, is the first thing she establishes when we settle into her vanity van for our chat: “A happy woman is a beautiful woman. Being a happy person within makes you a beautiful person.”
Beauty & Body
We talk about her skin and body anyway—it’s such a big part of her profession, plus she’s the new Pond’s Girl. “I’d like to say that I do it all by myself, but I don’t. I’d like to say it’s easy, but it isn’t!” she says honestly. Dermatologist Dr Jayshree Sharad, whose book Skin Talks Ileana has been tweeting about, manages her skin; she works out “like crazy” with celebrity fitness trainer Yasmin Karachiwala, doing Pilates and crunches—for two hours a day (sometimes three), at eight in the morning, every single day!
She isn’t on a very strict diet, just moderates her food and tries her best to stay away from unhealthy stuff, having a little rice and sometimes a little dessert. “The time I went on a very strict diet, and cut out carbs and sugar, I really shrunk. Crash diets don’t work, nor are they healthy.”
“Sex was probably made to keep you in shape. And it’s pleasurable, so why not?!”
Luckily, she doesn’t really have a sweet tooth: “But when I’m PMSing, I crave sugar to another level… sometimes, I wonder what’s going to happen when I get pregnant, this is just PMS!”
Family First
Apart from her fear that she’s going to “bloat like a balloon” when she gets pregnant (she’s already been looking up on how to get ones body in shape after a baby), Ileana can’t wait to have kids. Family is very important to her, and she lives down the road from one of her three siblings, her older sister whose son’s pictures she’s always posting on Instagram. “We are all very close. I still cry when I miss my Mum,” who’s in Houston where Ileana’s brother and sister are studying; Dad’s in Goa. “My sister and I catch up. I babysit when I’m not working. We always do things together, and keep making calls to Mum.” This keeps her a little disconnected, and is probably why she doesn’t have many friends in the industry. “There are a few who I am quite fond of and who I trust. But it has always been family for me.”
Ileana was born in Bombay, and when she was nine or ten, her mother moved with the kids to a small under-construction house in Goa. “Dad was still working in Bombay. My mum did everything single-handedly—she got the house up, she got the water running, she got the power going.” She recalls them having to put buckets on the terrace to collect rainwater. “It was really hard initially.” So it bothers her when people say that she’s lucky, that she’s got everything: “You cannot take anyone or their journey for granted.”
Despite the meager money, those were amazing, untouched, innocent times, the “happiest days” of her life. “Some days we’d put mattresses on the terrace and would fall asleep, and wake up in the morning with squirrels running around.”
In Her Skin
When the opportunity came her way, borne out of a meeting with Marc Robinson arranged by a colleague of her mother’s, Ileana was initially reluctant to be in front of the camera. “When I was in my early teens, I was really rowdy, a tom-boy running around, climbing trees, catching frogs. But when I got to college, I became really shy, I wasn’t sure of myself.”
And, like all of us, Ileana was very self-conscious about her body. “The boys would say ‘She’s so fat, look at her big arse!’” Now she’s proud of it—“Men like big booty!”—and, inevitably, our conversation turns to the video, Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’. “Oh my god,” she says astounded. “I mean, where did they get arses that big… I thought mine was big but that’s huge!”
It was her family who encouraged, inspired her to seize the day. (Inspiration is a big theme in her life, and she has the Latin ‘Inspirare’ tattooed onto the inside of her wrist.) As her confidence grew, she began enjoying her work and getting good at it. And she’s learnt to dress for her body, sticking to silhouettes in black, burgundies, deep wines, dark blue and bottle green, irrespective of fashion trends.
Filmstardom
She’s been part of the South and Hindi film industries (but doesn’t like being called a ‘star’). They’re different, she says. For one, the South is way more mass market. The actors’ involvement is lot less, sans script meetings; there aren’t emotional or promotional aspects to films. Plus, she doesn’t know the languages. “It’s really quick, which is why I have done so many films there, probably four in a year.”
Barfi, Anurag Basu’s 2012 masterpiece marked her entry in to Hindi films. “It took me three months to decide if I wanted to do it or not.” At that time, she had really big offers coming from the South. Here, there were Ranbir and Priyanka, and she even didn’t get the guy in the end. Plus, there was a clause in the contract that allowed the director to do away with her role.
Leading cinematographer and debutant director Ravi K Chandran, who also straddles the South and Hindi film industries, and has recently shot Ileana for the Pond’s commercial (“stunning—lovely skin, nice smile, gorgeous eyes”), understands her fears. “She’s a very big star in the South, especially in the Telugu industry. Every hero, every director wants to work with her.”
It was a big risk—that’s paid off, she thinks, despite the flop (Phata Poster Nikla Hero, 2013) and semi-hit (Main Tera Hero, April 2014) that have followed. “As much as I loved working in the South, I got into a very comfortable zone. I needed the change.” Happy Ending, scheduled for a November 2014 release, has her playing an author alongside Saif Ali Khan, Govinda, Ranvir Shorey and Kalki Koechlin.
She says that, although she loves her work, it is not her life. “Most of them make it their life and an obsession,” she says about fellow actors, “but for me, while I love it, it’s great, it’s exciting, I can do without it. The minute you get too attached, it is going to bring you down.”
It’s no wonder that she has such a healthy equation with this capricious career. Her father is famous for having told a reporter that he would rather have her home, living a normal life, instead of working 18 stressful hours a day; early in her career, her mother yelled at a director who kept Ileana hungry all day and then marched her off the set.
The Women's Health cover story.
At Home
“I’m a real homebody,” Ileana declares. Unusually, she has no household help, and cooks, cleans and runs her home all by herself. “I like the fact that people tell me I am crazy in the industry. For me, this is just a way of staying grounded.”
She’d be a couch potato if she could, watching cooking shows on TV all day. She’s always experimenting with food, and bakes a lot, desserts, donuts and pizzas (all of which she sends to her sister). While she likes sketching, her true love is singing (her Twitter profile says she’s a “professional bathroom singer”), which she would pursue was she not “terrified of rejection”.
I ask her about her relationship (she’s said to be dating Australian Andrew Kneebone). “I’ve never been really open about it. I just feel it is really unfair to my partner, because he becomes part of the media, which can be too offensive and aggressive.” When the time is right, she’ll tell the world. For now, “As long as my family knows, that’s all that matters.”
An edited version of this interview was the cover story of Women's Health in October 2014.
Is Feminism Relevant Today? /
September 2014: My take on the evolving conversation around feminism today.
The other day, at a gathering of distant relatives, I was introduced to this older lady as a “feminist writer”. After the polite hellos, she said, “So, you’re a feminist, huh?” I nodded. “Well, I don’t think feminism is necessary nowadays… Look at all walks of life, women are now equal. At the forefront even.”
What is Feminism?
It was the first day of feminism class in our all-girls college in New Delhi. Dr Abraham walked in and asked us whether we were feminists. We all nodded yes. “What is feminism?” Three years before, I’d written an essay on the subject to get into college, and to Dr Abraham I remember answering “freedom” and “equality”. Thus began my journey of understanding this complex subject, but even now, I always reach back to my first answers about what it is. Then, simplistically, I thought it was about women being equal to men, and freedom being the ability to live life without gender constraints like men in India seemed to. Now, I see feminism as a way towards an egalitarian, utopian world for everyone—man, woman, either, neither, irrelevant—by addressing the issues faced by the gender that bears the brunt of gender discrimination.
Now, I’m not unfamiliar with the arguments against feminism. Those who advocate them fall in to two broad categories: those who believe that women are genuinely the weaker sex that deserves to be subjugated for religious or sociocultural reasons, and those who believe, like the lady from the party and many subscribers to the Women Against Feminism movement, that women are already ‘equal’.
The End is Nowhere Near
To the former type, I have nothing to say (not here, idiot). It’s the latter reason, especially coming from those living in a country like India, that actually astounds me. As a rookie many years ago, one of my interview questions to British author Helen Cross was whether she was a feminist. And she answered that people don’t really ask that in England “because they just sort-of presume that everybody is, because it’s kind-of beyond that point”; she said she was asked that a lot here because it was an “active and dynamic” conversation.
I especially don’t understand it when the women here say that.
A) How do YOU think you got here, wearing jeans, having careers, taking selfies in your bikinis, living with your boyfriends, eh?
B) Are you really ‘equal’ and ‘free’ from any sort of gender discrimination—at work, on the street, in your relationships? (Answer ‘no’ straightaway if you get a male friend to drop you home at night.)
And C) Is every single woman around you as ‘equal’ as you—is there really no family you know where the son roams wild and free while the daughter’s expected to obey, or woman who has been harassed for dowry? There, you have your answer.
This is not to say that countries where women are highly emancipated, like the UK or US, have done away with gender discrimination and no longer need feminism. While they, for the most part, may not have to contend with issues as basic ours, women continue to bear the brunt of lookism and media stereotypes, battle the glass ceiling, and deal with sexual violence. In India, we deal with the whole range of gender issues—from child marriage and dowry to ‘First World’ concerns like those listed above, judgement-free promiscuity, maiden surnames and independent choice.
Take this week, for instance. A leading movie star has taken a leading newspaper to task for a headline that calls attention to her cleavage with an open letter about choice, reel/real (an quick summary here), spawning much conversation about double standards—the newspaper’s, the film industry’s and even hers. In another India not so far away, the grave of a toddler girl, suspected to have been buried alive and rumoured to be a ‘goddess’, became an impromptu pilgrimage site for hundreds of villagers, who came to offer prayers, fruits, flowers and money.
While I have oftentimes wondered at the futility of writing about ‘evolved’ concerns when there’s so much work on the basics that is yet to be done (read what I've written about it here), I’ll end with this: Feminism is beyond the bra burning and the wild lurch from domesticity to feminazi; it’s beyond first wave and second wave; it lives in plurals and pluralities, evolving as society has, addressing a problem here, another there. It is a means to an end. And until genders are equal on all levels, the feminists’ fight is far from over.
This column appeared on 3QD in September 2014.
Interview: Shruti Haasan /
September 2014: She rocks red lipstick, a white ganji and leather neckpieces, but she can also let her hair fall in soft curls and take pouty selfies with shaggy-haired dogs. It’s the reason actor, singer-songwriter Shruti Haasan is the 'Kolaveri' Diva.
The cover of Women's Health.
She started out as a star child and went on to being a child star, so it’s surprising that Shruti Haasan says she has never felt the pressure, the burden of expectations, let alone wilt under them. “I’ve always been encouraged to find my own voice, be my own person. That’s been so important that I really haven’t bothered about what anyone else is doing, including my parents.” She’s got her name tattooed on her back in Tamil—she’s got to be serious.
On this muggy pre-monsoon Mumbai day, the shoot’s running a bit late (as shoots are wont to do), and I am ushered in to chat with Shruti Haasan as her make-up is being done, big curlers are being set in her hair, her food is being ordered and the style team is discussing what she is going to wear.
As people buzz around her, I can’t help but think that this attention must have always seemed natural to the daughter of superstars Kamal Haasan and Sarika. Not true, she says. “Both my parents are very simple people. Except when it was the night of a movie premier or someone was receiving an award, I didn’t really feel like I was extra-special… it was an ordinary upper-middle-class kind-of upbringing.” Of her childhood, her father says, “Apart from helping Shruti grow the way she wanted, we did very little.”
Getting Here
What she does conjure up is a childhood in Chennai, bursting with the arts and creativity: “My parents aren’t religious, and the arts have been the only standard god in our lives.” She believes art is all encompassing, an idea she embodies as an actor and singer-songwriter, dancer and model; as does her multitalented younger sister Akshara (who is an actor, screenwriter and assistant director). Growing up, she says, the movie set always felt like an extended home. So is she home then, at home, living the life of an actor; at 28, doing seven big movies this year. “To be honest,” she says, “music is my soul-calling and acting is something I just stumbled into, though it doesn’t seem like this would be likely.”
Music is what classically trained Shruti has always wanted to do, and it was her primary pursuit for many years. She sang her first song, in her father’s Thevar Magan, at six, and continued to sing, write lyrics and compose music for Tamil and Hindi films. She studied at the Musicians Institute in California, and was the vocalist of the alt rock band The Extramentals that played blues and rock with slight pop and Hindustani influences. “Music was my mainstay. It isn’t now, but it was. I don’t get to do as much because my schedule doesn’t allow it and there’s really no time to practise with a band.” She counts Lamb of God, Incubus, Tori Amos and Aqualung among her inspirations, and loves danceable ghati Tamil songs—though not the chart-topping ‘Why This Kolaveri Di?’: “When you’re the Kolaveri girl, it’s not so exciting!”
The Here & Now
Now, Shruti says, she’s equally (but in a very different way) passionate about being an actor. Considering she chose to prioritise her acting career rather late in the day, it has certainly picked up, and the seven films she has in her kitty all have big stars spanning the Hindi, Tamil and Telugu film industries. In Hindi, there’s Welcome Back and Rocky Handsome with John Abraham, Gabbar with Akshay Kumar, and Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Yaara with Irrfan Khan and Vidyut Jamwal; Hari’s Poojai with Vishal, and an untitled film with Vijay and Sridevi in Tamil; and an untitled Telugu film with Mahesh Babu. This is really the kind of life she has always wanted—being busy, travelling and not having a moment to think. “There’s something really fun about travelling with a movie… Having said that, if my entire film career was in this room, I’d be happy doing that as well.”
The only thing she doesn’t like about her job right now is how much she has to pack and unpack. On days that she’s home in Mumbai and not working (which is rarely, she laments), she likes spending time with her friends, watching TV and cooking. Given the recent rumours linking her to cricketer Suresh Raina, I ask her if she’s single, if she has a “good friend” hidden in her closet, and she laughs: “No, I’m really single. My good friends are my good friends, other friends are other friends… though none of those exists at the moment!”
The Women's Health cover story.
Body Balance
Shruti’s favourite cuisine is Tamilian—it’s what she enjoys cooking and what she indulges in when she’s not watching her diet: chicken biryani, ghee-laden sambar and potato curries. She has to make a conscious choice to eat right and workout whenever she can because, of late, she says, she’s developed a tendency to put on weight. While a nutritionist has guided her in the past, she has now figured out what works for her body and carefully balances her proteins and carbohydrates. As far as exercise goes, she says she has never worked with a trainer. “I’ve always had a leaning towards athletics and I understand my body. I do some basic cardio, dance and work with my body weight, at a gym, at home or in a hotel.”
Like most of us, Shruti’s tried crash dieting and has also been through phases of manic working out, where she has been “addicted”. “But then, you’re just not a very nice person, plus it’s really not good for you. It starts showing in your personality, on your face, because your body needs fuel to be happy, and my fuel is food.” Though today she’s not working out as much as she used to—it fluctuates according to the type of role she’s playing—for the most part she sticks to a diet and exercise plan she’s devised and is comfortable with.
As the stylists bustle around, our conversation veers towards her fashion sense, and she says she is not very fashion conscious and what she wears depends on her mood—catch her at a party or at an awards function, and you’ll see what she means, her style can go from boho to glam. “I would say that my dressing sense is very eclectic. It’s not about what’s in fashion or what’s trendy or who the best designer is—it’s never been about those things. It’s just about the mood and state of mind that I'm in.” She doesn’t have a favourite designer either. “I may like a piece from this designer or that, but not the rest of the collection. I like to mix and match.” Her team jokes that she may not have more than one outfit from any particular designer in her wardrobe! One thing’s for sure though: black is her all-time favourite. “I am always wearing black. I believe that once you’ve discovered black, you are just sorted for life!”
By showing her mettle in the acting arena, and by taking very public stands against stalkers and those who recently leaked pictures of her from the film Yevadu (she’s filed FIRs in all cases), Shruti is certainly making her voice heard. She comes across as a balance between right-brain artistic and left-brain sensible, with a fierce independent streak. Making feminists proud, she asserts: “I’ve got things to do and bills to pay. Financially, mentally and physically, I am responsible for myself.” Asserts Kamal Haasan: “Whatever she is, is her making now—her music, words, wisdom, all.”
No daddy’s little girl, this.
KAMAL HAASAN ON SHRUTI
“From the time Shruti would fit the length of my elbow to my palm where her head rested and she straddled my biceps, I discovered she was a rocker; her younger sister was a walker. Shruti would sleep only when she was rocked to sleep and Akshara had to be walked around. Shruti did not do extraordinary things except a few astounding ones like reading any material you gave in her hand when she was seven months old. Newspapers, tablet strips, chocolate wrappers, anything she would read alone, in a language only she understood, a language of her own.
I think apart from helping Shruti grow the way she wanted, we did very little. Whatever she is, is her making now—her music, words, wisdom, all. From the crook of my arm to standing four inches taller than me in her heels that give her a giddy height, I still can recognise the Shruti I have known. She has just begun.
Moving aside from my bias as a father, just watching her as a curious and maybe an envious peer, I see her travelling great distances and attaining greater heights even without her heels. Shruti is a special child as a human and an artiste. I never believed in blessing so I applaud even before her true performance has begun.”
An edited version of this interview was the cover story of Women's Health in September 2014.
Public Display of Divorce /
July 2014: Breaking the taboo of divorce in largely conservative India.
Conceptual photograph courtesy Sahil Mane.
A Bit of Background
Last year, I put up this status message on Facebook: "Today, the 15th of February, is the 10th anniversary of my first wedding. It's interesting how far both of us, my ex-husband and I, have come since our divorce in 2006. And how different life—lives—would have been if I had stayed. Oh, thank god!"
People have always asked me why I talk about my divorce, including this article featured in Mirrors across India a few weeks after I got remarried two years ago. I have several reasons.
I got married to S— when I was 19 and he was 30, back in 2003, when the world was different, I was different. After one failed attempt in July/August, we got separated in December 2005, when I moved to Mumbai, and divorced 10 months later.
First, a caveat. I spoke casually about being divorced much before I got remarried, much before I found love with Sahil. I spoke about it when I was down, devastated and broke; when I was single; to friends and strangers; and at job interviews. I even spoke about considering one the very first time I met a woman who is now a friend—a young divorcee herself, she said (and I remember this vividly), "Are you sure, Tara*? I find now that I am perpetually ‘<Insert her own name> the Divorcee'." I put that in right upfront, as I realise it could seem convenient to talk about it now, when all has turned out okay. For instance, though there were many years in between, my grandparents didn't tell anyone in Dehradun, the small town in North India in which they live that I was divorced until I got remarried (the veritable ‘happy ending').
[I realised this when I had gone for my granddad's 80th birthday celebrations a few years ago, only to be startled by questions of "S— kahan hain, beta?", "Aapke husband Indonesia se nahi aa paye?" ("Where is S—?", "Your husband wasn't able to come from Indonesia?") That's when I pieced together the story they had been telling, or letting brew, partly grounded in the truth—my ex-husband is, indeed, currently in Indonesia, just with a different wife.]
Because of this, I've been asked this over and over, from the curious as well as the concerned ‘what is the need to wash dirty linen is public', I'll tell you why I speak about it.
From a personal point of view, it is because I believe in being the same person in all situations (which does not mean one doesn't respond to context). I never had a word for it, and so use my friend Jordyn's one: ‘integrated personality'. Also, secrets that don't really make a difference to ones life are overrated, and too much baggage. I have been divorced; that's one of the things that has happened in my life.
Perhaps I needn't remind/inform the thousands of ‘friends'/followers on Facebook and Twitter about my divorce. But, at the risk of sounding pompous, I do it for grander sociological reasons. A) I'd like to help relax the social stigma around divorce for those concerned and their families—there's still a lot of that in India, and B) I want people who are going through it to know that, well, it's okay, even at the worst times.
Stigma-Shigma & Blah
To be fair, I have never faced much social trauma about the divorce.
Surprisingly, though it was my progressive father who pointed out the flaws in my marriage, it was he who told me to go back the first time I left. To be fair, he was dying then, and knew he was leaving Ma and I with nothing: so having me ‘settled' was important. Nonetheless, I left about a year before he died, and he was okay, as long as I was focussing on my career. My grandparents, older people in a small town, probably felt the social stigma more. It's no wonder then that, when Sahil and I were living together refusing to get married, my grandmother gently said, "He's a lovely boy from a good family, he loves you a lot. Shaadi kar lo, bete, tum toh divorced bhi ho." ("Get married, child, you're even divorced.") Without malice, she was tenderly implying that I wasn't that eligible a match anymore.
But personally, I faced nothing. Not in my career, not from my family, not from friends (handpicked liberals anyway), certainly not from my best-friend-turned-partner-turned-husband, and not even ever from my lovely in-laws, who'd known about it from minute Sahil and I had become friends. I realise I could have had it worse, much worse. And I know people, particularly women, across India and other traditional countries do.
In my first workplace in Mumbai, about eight years ago, many people in my office were divorced, four-five of twenty. This was probably a function of being at a KPO, at that point, and soon after in the English media, young industries teeming with educated urban youth, and not in more conventional ones like banking or manufacturing. But recently, on a family visit to Dehradun, my aunt sat counselling our lovely neighbour, whose wife wants a divorce. The bit I overheard was her gently telling him that, though we belong to a traditional family (well, I'm probably the exception), two of my father's first cousins; the only grandchild, me; and so many others we know are divorced. Clearly, divorce is an urban epidemic.
I know ideology is immune to reason. So I don't expect to convert conservatives, traditionalists and conformists, but, nonetheless, I ask this: so, socially, what is the big deal about divorce? A woman lost her hymen (which I hope she wasn't preserving for marriage anyway); a couple lived with each other, someone thought s/he'd be happier elsewhere (or worse, the partner thought s/he'd be happier elsewhere), and they separate to live independent lives. So? So fucking what.
Of course, women bear the brunt of the social censure, as they do for most things under patriarchy. And just as one of the reasons for the divorce epidemic in urban India is women's earning power and independence (we don't need to take shit anymore), it is this very aspect that will immunise you against the social censure you could face from family and society. Family is whatever family is, but generally, surround yourself with people who'll understand and support you, or at least mind their own business. Grow a thicker skin, and get and stay financially independent.
No Gain Without Pain
Not dealing with social censure is not to say that divorce was a cakewalk. It wasn't. At 22, I left Chennai for Mumbai with little money, a broken heart, no job, an on-and-off boyfriend and no maike** as my parents were without a home during my dad's illness. There were days of crying and hopelessness, but at the base of it all was an understanding that this was a choice. I would rather be here, braving the pain and the pressure, than be back in a marriage I did not want. (And, I know this is simplistic to say about divorce, but hey, I've been through enough painful breakups to know this: even if your spouse is the one who wants out and you think it's being lumped on you… would you really want to stay with someone who doesn't want to be with you?) Though times were much worse than in the marriage, I knew that, eventually, I'd be happier. Eventually.
When the Mumbai Mirror article came out, I didn't even know. I was in Delhi on work, not that I would have known if I were in Mumbai as I read the newspaper only later in the day, much after Facebook and Gmail-checking (heck, I go online even before I brush my teeth)! So when I went online, I was damn surprised to find an unusual number of friend requests, messages, followers. Huh? What was going on?
Before I could get to reading the messages, my mother-in-law called. The article was out, and she wasn't happy, neither was my mother. (Though when I asked my mother why she was unhappy—wasn't she the one telling me to use my writing to make a difference to people's lives?—she couldn't say why.) Then, I read the messages. Some were from people, both men and women, who weren't divorced, just commending me for being so "gutsy". But quite a few were from women who empathised, talked about the pain they had been or were going through, and generally just talked. And this divorced aunt who'd fallen apart after her divorce—well, she called me and said she was happy to see hope. Go figure.
Divorce is painful. Do I go so far as to recommend it?
A long time ago, it's been many years, I read a little snippet in The Times of India's juicy ‘World' page. It was about this divorce lawyer in America who was drawing flack for printing t-shirts that said ‘Life is Short, Get a Divorce'. I've remembered this line all this while, and it is truly what I feel. If you're unhappy, and you believe whatever you think lies ahead after the divorce (don't focus on the immediate pain and chaos) is better than where you are, go for it. I totally recommend it.
If I could go back and do it again, would I?
If I could go back and correct the course of my life, would I have got married, at 19, to S—? No, I wouldn't. I think one must choose life partners more wisely than I did, if at all, at a more mature age than I did. S— is a great guy, don't get me wrong, just not the guy for me. But hindsight is always 20/20.
But if I could only go back until a point after the marriage, would I get divorced? Hell yes, I would get divorced, definitely. Those that find love and happiness in their first marriages have better EQ than I did, or are plain lucky (my second husband certainly is, and our relationship, with or without the ‘marriage' tag, is certainly ‘it' for us). But giving love and, indeed, life another chance by getting divorced has totally been worth it. It was worth it when I was bawling my eyes out; it was worth it when I dated the nitwits, despairing about finding love again; it was worth it when I thought I would stay single, big deal; it has been worth it in the long run. And so too for Shiv: he is remarried to someone much more suited to his personality and lifestyle, and has two children as well.
So far, I've only talked of the advantages of getting divorced in relation to being unhappily married. Through the divorce, I also discovered that it has advantages over never having been married. Really!
For one, it freed me from a lot of social pressure. No more was it anyone's responsibility to protect a social ‘ideal' and my modesty, and that I was no longer a virgin was no longer a secret. So I could party, fuck, and be free.
Secondly, it cut out the traditionalists, conservatives and judgementals from my life. Anyone who wanted to befriend or date me had to be chilled out and liberal, and see me for who I am as a person.
Finally, through the experiences of a failed first marriage and divorce, I grew. We are all living creatures, changing and evolving. What we see and deal with changes us, makes us richer and deeper.
A long time ago, Sahil had said something very beautiful. Though he wished I'd never have had to go through the pain of the divorce, he was damn glad I did: "It's your journey that makes you the person you are, and I love you the way you are," he said. "And, if you hadn't got divorced, you wouldn't be with me!"
So, yeah, focus on your silver lining. And smile!
**Maike: A married woman's parents' home, culturally considered a place of solace or refuge, where she returns to get pampered right before and after delivery, and during marital trouble.
This column appeared on 3QD in July 2014.
Not People Like Us! /
July 2014: Sociocultural and economic factors play an important role in the way we address issues of justice and sexual violence in India.
One only needed to open the papers or keep a lazy eye on the internet to be taken aback, afresh, at the spate of horrific crimes against women that have recently put Bengaluru and UP in the news.
Sisters raped, murdered and hung from a tree; sisters gang raped over seven days; 11th standard student raped, murdered and disfigured; and, finally 32-year-old gang raped to death—that’s UP. In Bengaluru, girl kidnapped, along with a male friend, and sexually molested in a car at knifepoint; female doctor stripped; 16-year-old apprentice nun in a Christian seminary raped in the day; and six-year-old raped in her school by teachers. And, the spotlight’s back on women’s safety, like it was in 2012.
When I wrote about the Delhi Rape Case, someone in UP told me: “Such cases are par for the course here, it’s just because it happened in Delhi that people and the media are reacting.” While the brutality and frequency of the UP cases have succeeded in getting them past our apathy, the Bengaluru cases have pricked our thick skins because, well, let’s admit it, it’s Bangalore, the cosmopolitan IT hub with its breweries and bars, old-world clubs and many English channels on the radio. And these are People Like Us.
These, the sociocultural and economic aspects are especially relevant in understanding the way the media and people of India address issues of justice and sexual violence. Us in metros, part of the educated, social-media-using SEC A, the coveted target audience for much advertising and the English media, are considered, and consider ourselves, an entitled bunch. The ‘Stranger Danger’ of India shouldn’t touch us in our gated communities, chauffeured cars, reputed schools and golden cages. We sleep-walk to our attached bathrooms at midnight; when we hear of a girl raped and murdered when she left her home to relieve herself in the fields, in a faraway village somewhere in UP, we think, “This would never happen to me.” When it does, to us or to PLU, living in cities like us, living lives like ours, doing things we would do, making choices we would make, we’re reminded of the fragility of our lives and lifestyles, and we’re outraged.
The PLU/non-PLU divide is the new-age class divide, based on but not limited to complex factors like the religion, caste, culture, haves/have-nots, Us/The Other biases of yore, and education, access, location, English, consumerism, liberalisation, money, the internet, media. In The World Before Her, documentary filmmaker Nisha Pahuja portrays this gap as a yawning chasm, a polarised duality that demands women chose between Indian and ‘Western’ values. In actual fact, we live in a diverse and populous land in the throes of change, where cultures and classes are crisscrossing, clashing and coming together all the time. And we’ve got to strive for a little more mutual understanding, a little more common ground.
Says Sowmya Rajaram, Junior Assistant Editor with the Bengaluru tabloid that exposed the Frazer Town car abduction case says, “Arguments that pit cities against each other (Delhi vs Mumbai or Mumbai vs UP) make it seem like rape is a malaise that can be treated with just a simple city-switch (‘find a job in Mumbai where it’s safer to travel at night’), or a rise in economic standing (‘get a car, you’ll be safe from gropers’). Rape is a consequence of the attitudes entrenched all throughout our chauvinistic society.”
I am not, for a moment, suggesting that PLU don’t commit or endure sexual violence, that we’ve all collectively, uniformly acquired a Zen-like disengagement from patriarchy and understanding of our rights and the rights of others. We do need groups like Win Bangalore Back, that was started as a Facebook page as a reaction to the Frazer Town car abduction case and now has 19,000 members engaged in the gender conversation. And Russ Peterson, one of the 10-12 people running the campaign, tells me that they intend to continue: “We want to channelise this outrage, and continue to address the issues of sexual abuse, the responsibilities and accountability of the police, and the rights and responsibilities of the citizens.”
Not to sound patronising, but, for their sheer number, it is the majority that we have to understand, educate, engage, empower. The majority that is heterogeneous and complex, speaks different languages, lives in places out of our earshot or teem in the crooks of urban life, culturally transitioning, not reached through books and newspapers, not as aware of human rights and feminism as you or I. “It is time the protestors moved beyond their anger that often comes from a place of privilege, and clamoured for a holistic, empathetic understanding of rape culture,” says Sowmya. More grassroots campaigns are the order of the day. And for any real good to come out of all our drawing-room conversations and online outrage, it’s time you had a heart-to-heart with your maid.
An edited version of this article appeared in DNA in July 2014.