Vidya Balan has a knack to make you feel heard. She grins, nods, ponders and responds animatedly, even in the most chaotic environments — like the backstage of an event, as she’s being ushered around by demanding managers. Almost always dressed in elaborate Indian attire, she has a certain feral alertness while interacting with the media. She may be regurgitating her answers in an unending conveyor belt of pre-release interviews, but she makes you believe that you are the first to hear them. With her latest film, the biopic Shakuntala Devi, marking her inadvertent foray into the streaming space due to the Covid-19 pandemic (the film was shot for the big screen), the 41-year-old is compelled to meet the press over video and audio calls, from her Mumbai home.
That does not deter Balan from dressing up when she speaks with us. She is indulging her Malayali roots in a loosely-fitted mustard silk pant suit with clamp-dyed shibori dots, designed by Kochi-based brand Rouka by Sreejith Jeevan and made by differently-abled artisans. She shares this deep love for dressing up with Devi, which made her instantly drawn to the late mathematical genius, writer and politician from Bengaluru, famously known as the ‘human computer’. Her talent earned her a place in The Guinness Book of World Records and took her around the world, where she ‘performed’ her skill of calculating at an astonishing speed. Her mind was the subject of several studies, including one at the University of California, Berkley. “She defies the image of a boring mathematician,” observes Balan. “Till the very end [of her life] she coloured her hair, wore bright saris and lipstick, and was the life of a party whenever she went to one; she lived it up. She also had a wicked sense of humour. She is the only computer [I know] with a sense of humour!”
Filmmakers who’ve worked with Balan notice the same high-octane presence in the actor. “Vidya, for me, is a lot of fun to work with,” says Sujoy Ghosh, who directed her in Kahaani, a landmark project in her career. Playing a pregnant woman in the critically-acclaimed crime-thriller, she was lauded for delicately traversing the line between strength and vulnerability. “She brings a serious amount of happy energy on the set, which is priceless,” he adds.
A still from the movie
Living on her terms
An outsider to Bollywood, Balan made her foray into cinema from television through her breakout role in Parineeta (2005), in her late 20s. It was, what many would call, a late start for a lead actress in Bollywood. But thereon, she carved a unique space for herself, where she not only acted in films led by solo female characters, but also demonstrated that they can be profitable. It is the reason she is attracted to women like Devi, Silk Smitha (Dirty Picture, 2011), Krishna Verma (Ishqiya, 2010), Sulochana Dubey (Tumhari Sulu, 2017), and Tara Shinde (Mission Mangal, 2019) — they lived on their own terms. “I feel if Shakuntala Devi could live her life the way she did way back then, we women who have it much easier today have no reason not to stand our ground and fight for our dreams,” she declares.
- Shakuntala Devi comes hot on the heels of Mission Mangal, in which she played a scientist at ISRO. With a bachelors degree in Sociology from St Xavier's College, Mumbai, and a Masters from Mumbai University, Balan has no background in STEM, yet she says she enjoys numbers. “I think being a South Indian and not having pursued academics beyond that, my parents are thrilled that at least this way I can claim to be a scientist and a mathematician,” she laughs.
What Balan found most inspiring about Devi is her unapologetic desire to have it all, irrespective of her age. Beyond her mathematical prowess, Devi wrote numerous books on a variety of subjects, from caste, rural development, parenting to homosexuality. Her tumultuous marriage with her first husband, who was gay, inspired her to write The World of Homosexuals (1977), containing personal interviews with queer men. It was believed to be the first educational tome on the subject in post-Independent India. “It was almost like she was living so many lives at the same time, and for a woman at that time I think that was amazing,” says Balan.
Vidya Balan | Photo Credit: Dabboo Ratnani
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Impudent yet grounded
In 2016, when Devi’s daughter, Anupama Banerji, asked filmmaker Anu Menon who she had in mind to play her mother, Menon instantly named Balan (without even approaching her). “Both Shakuntala Devi and Vidya have the ability to listen to their inner voice, go after it unapologetically, own their successes and failures [equally], are witty and have the biggest laughs,” says Menon. Balan’s previous experience with biopics like Dirty Picture made the creative process easier, as they both agreed the film ought to capture the essence of a personality rather than be an-all encompassing life account or an imitation. The tone of the film reflects Devi’s whimsical, impudent personality, making Balan, a gregarious and ebullient actor, a perfect fit. “Vidya also has the best set etiquette for an actor that I have ever worked with,” says Menon. “She has this innate ability to have the right balance between being collaborative yet carving that space for herself so she can rejuvenate.”
Balan has adeptly been juggling personal and professional life by doing a film a year since more than a decade. “Someone just told me that Akshay [Kumar] has announced a whole lot of films over the next two years and I was like, ‘wow that’s so inspiring; more power to him’. Here I’m trying to hibernate between two films,” she chortles.
A still from the movie
Digital retake
While shooting for Amit Masurkar’s Sherni in March, the actor had to return to Mumbai because of the pandemic and the concomitant lockdown. “We had to wrap up, but we hope to resume post rains,” she says. With the looming uncertainties, Balan is apprehensive of taking on any new projects and prefers to wait and see how the post-pandemic world will look like for Bollywood. But she is hopeful that cinema halls will stay, even if big-ticket films like Shakuntala Devi and Gulabo Sitabo are finding a direct OTT release. “It is [being] a bit alarmist when people say, ‘Oh, it is going to be the end of people going to the theatres’,” she says. “If anything, digital is only going to widen the horizon.”
Like many of her contemporaries, the actor hasn’t shied away from dabbling in various digital mediums. While the plans of her playing Indira Gandhi in a web series look rather uncertain, she was recently seen in a short film, Natkhat — playing a mother struggling to raise a child in the thick of toxic masculinity — for which she also turned producer. The film premiered at the ‘We Are One’ online film festival, further consolidating her interest in vocalising the ugliness of deep-rooted patriarchy and machismo, and showcasing a spectrum of women, who made efforts to liberate themselves, in cinema.