Interview: Vidya Balan

By: Jai Rajendrakumar

Sometimes the most enjoyable aspect of acting is in pretending to be someone you are not. So when professional actors step into a character in front of the camera, chances are he or she is the exact opposite in real life.

Take Bollywood actress Vidya Balan, for example. In the upcoming film Ishqiya, she plays a femme fatale attempting to win the hearts of two men with her soothing sweet-talking that makes the strongest of men melt like a 1,000-degree knife seamlessly and smoothly cutting through ice-cold butter.

Yet Balan will quickly point out she was merely playing the part and doing her job, as she is nothing like that in person.

In fact, in speaking about her personality while promoting this week’s release of Ishqiya, Balan said she is actually quiet in real life, and the explicitly steamy dialogue in the film strikes no resemblance to the way she lives her life off the screen.

“I was very apprehensive while using … slang. I have never used them in my real life, but I had to because the script demanded,” Balan explained about playing Krishna on-screen and how it differs from her personality in real life. “The movie belongs to a certain terrain where slang is part of their lingo. (Director) Abhishek Choubey had to constantly keep giving me a pep-talk. Quite often I was stuck because of the language and content.”

Despite highlighting the differences between Krishna and herself, Balan said her portrayal of the character was actually quite important in keeping consistent with the film’s spirit of making a statement.

In terms of Krishna specifically, Balan said the character represents a shift in the paradigm of how women are portrayed in Bollywood.

“When it comes to cinema, time and again women are seen and heard in a certain manner,” Balan told reporters. “Also, they are not necessarily shown to be their own selves and are instead driven by people around them. However, in the case of Ishqiya, the portrayal of women is entirely different. That’s because Krishna is a woman who is ‘direct dil se.’”

In detailing Krishna’s personality even more, Balan said her character in Ishqiya demonstrates that women have multiple facets to their personalities, irrespective of whether they are demur, passive or bold.

“She is someone who will do what she wants. In fact, the most thrilling part for me was that I was playing a bad woman for the first time,” Balan told reporters with wit and thought. “This doesn’t mean, though, that she doesn’t have good shades at all. She has both sides to her persona, and this is why she is an epitome of gray.”

Elaborating upon the gray aspects of her character, Balan said Krishna has so many facets to her, there really is no appropriate label to attach to her, and that is exactly how most women are in real life, even if they are nowhere near the personality type of Krishna.

“This is what makes Krishna so special. She is a consummate Indian woman who can be a mother as well as a caretaker,” Balan emphatically described to reporters. “She would make chai and food for you when you wish, while in closed doors, she would expect her own needs and desires to be fulfilled. She is Rambha, Saraswati, Durga and Kaali — all brought together in one body.”

Balan went on to point out her character represents the independent woman — one who knows exactly what she wants and cannot be manipulated by others without there being consequences.

“Krishna is someone you can’t deceive, and in case you catch her on the wrong foot, you are doomed,” she frankly told reporters. “If she loves someone, she does so with an open heart and is all passionate. On the other hand, you make yourself her enemy and she won’t think twice about showing the violent and aggressive side of her.”

Ultimately, Balan’s character fits perfectly in a steamy plot that pushes the envelope, at least by Bollywood standards. It was a role Balan apparently seemed happy to take on.

Despite the talented and experienced cast surrounding her, Balan should be able to make Krishna among the most memorable characters in the film.

Also starring Vishal Bhardwaj, Naseeruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi, Ishqiya has strong sexual overtones.

The Abhishek Chaubhey-directed and Vishal Bharadwaj-produced film about the affairs of a small town in Uttar Pradesh opens this week (on January 29th) in theaters throughout India.