New Delhi: Five years after Shabana Azmi won her first National Award for the 1972 film Ankur, the actor had an experience that made her want to quit the film industry.
On the sets of Manmohan Desai’s Parvarish (1977), Azmi requested choreographer Kamal Kumar to change the steps. She was petrified of dancing and intimidated by how good her co-star Neetu Singh was at it. But the seasoned choreographer took offence at Azmi’s request and humiliated her in front of 150 junior artistes and Singh. The actor then ran home barefoot, crying and vowing to never act again.
Azmi was in conversation with actor-director Aparna Sen at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre. The talk was followed by the screening of Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1972), Azmi’s debut movie. The conversation, part of the 17th Habitat Film Festival (HFF), also celebrated Azmi’s 50 years in cinema. The festival, which started on 16 May, will go on till 25 May.
Sen started the conversation by letting the audience in on a secret—she was offered the role of Laxmi in Benegal’s Ankur, which would win Azmi her first National Award.
Benegal, who was a family friend, had already faced rejections by many actors, including Waheeda Rehman, before he dialled Sen. The actor, however, said no to the role because the character would have to speak some Telugu.
“If he had asked why, I would have said I was scared, and maybe he would have said it’s okay. But I am glad I didn’t play it because I might have been bad. We got Shabana instead,” Sen said with a laugh, setting the tone of the next 40 minutes that dove into many nostalgic moments of her own collaboration with Azmi, along with anecdotes from working with Desai, Benegal, John Schlesinger, Satyajit Ray, and Mahesh Bhatt.
Sen and Azmi went back in time to tell the audiences how the Bombay-born, jeans-wearing Azmi, who was making her debut in Ankur, transformed into the Hyderbadi servant girl Laxmi for Benegal’s film.
“I had never entered a village before. Benegal asked me to walk through the village, dressed in the custom. I could not sit on my haunches either, and most of my role involved doing that. So he asked me to have my meals on the floor and practice sitting,” said Azmi.
But she finally got it right when she managed to convince a group of college boys that she was in fact an ayah.
“They had come to check out the shoot and asked me where the heroine was. I said she was not there, and when they wanted to know who I was, I said I was an ayah. And they went away,” Azmi said with a laugh. It was then that Benegal finally asked Azmi to join them at the dining table.
The actor went on to work with Satyajit Ray for Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977) and with Mrinal Sen for Khandhar (1984).
“After working with Ray, I begged him to cast me again. But he said that I would not look convincing as a Bengali,” said Azmi.
The actor would go on to disprove Ray through her role in Sonata (2017), where she plays the Bengali banker Dolon. Azmi even sings in Bengali in the film.
“After the film came out, many Bengalis on Facebook wrote that I have not given credit to the actual singer. And that got me validation that I sang it well,” said Azmi.
Crashing films & cars
Both Azmi and Sen talked about their admiration for each other’s work, which eventually resulted in them collaborating on four films together, with the latest of which was Sonata.
Azmi‘s performance in Arth (1982) had bowled Sen over. She asked the actor how she had played the scene in which her character, Pooja, begs Kavita (Smita Patil) to leave her husband, Inder (Kulbhushan Kharbanda). Azmi said that the scene was not part of the original shoot and was added as an afterthought by Bhatt.
“I had ten minutes to do the scene, and I had done only one mechanical rehearsal, and then I shot it. Actors love feeling powerful. But this was humiliation, and that person is inside you, and I cried all the way home after finishing the scene,” said Azmi. The movie went on to become a commercial success at the box office and won Azmi her second National Award.
In the meantime, Azmi had also reached out to Sen, writing a letter to praise the latter’s debut feature, 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), and expressing her desire to work with her. Sen offered Azmi Sati (1989), in which the actor played a mute orphan Brahmin girl who is married off to a tree due to her horoscope reading.
“Javed would later joke that when someone said Shabana is out in the garden, I would be very worried, and ask if there are trees she is sitting next to,” said Sen.
The experience of working with Sen made Azmi determined to be part of as many of her movies as possible.
“She called me before I was to make 15 Park Avenue, asking why she was not in it. When I said she was too old to play the role of Meethi’s (Konkona Sen Sharma) sister, she asked me to change the role and make it mother,” said Sen to claps and laughter from the audience.
Sen would eventually rewrite the role, making Anjali, Azmi’s character, Meethi’s much older step sister. Azmi had, however, lied that she knew how to drive a car, and during the shoot, almost crashed the vehicle.
“I asked her, why did you lie? Shabana replied, because otherwise you would not give me the role,” Sen added.
The movie also starred Rahul Bose and Waheeda Rehman, and won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English.
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‘Don’t do Satyajit Ray acting’
Azmi has excelled in both independent projects and commercial films, including two Manmohan Desai hits, Amar Akbar Anthony and Parvarish, both released in 1977.
“You need willing suspension of disbelief to act in commercial films. Desai would often tell me not to do Satyajit Ray acting,” said Azmi, explaining how she managed to carve out a place for herself in commercial films.
Both films turned out to be massive blockbusters, but Azmi almost didn’t return to the Parvarish set after her run-in with Kamal Kumar.
Desai apologised for the incident, and singer-actor Sulakshana Pandit convinced Azmi to get back to the role. Earlier, the director had asked Azmi to play the relatively small role of Laxmi in Amar Akbar Anthony.
“He told me both Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor had girlfriends in the film, and Vinod Khanna would kill me if I did not give him one. It was his honesty that made me say yes,” said Azmi.
At the closing of the animated discussion, Azmi also shared her notes on the roadmap to being a good actor.
“If you become too self-conscious of your art, it becomes bad art.”
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)