Interview: 'Enjoying More Fun At 34 Than 17': Vidya Balan

By Swati Malhotra / Mumbai

 Curvy is better than slim; offbeat is better than conventional; 34 is better than 17. An unapologetic Vidya on how she’s done with trying to keep others happy — and is loving it. An exclusive interview with bollywood 'hot' and super actress 'Vidya Balan Kapoor' in a free-wheeling moments with INN, recently in Mumbai. Here are excerpts:

Actresses usually make it big in their twenties. In their thirties, they’re trying to hold on to past success. Your Bollywood career practically takes off in your thirties, in visibility terms — something that has few parallels in mainstream Bollywood. Are you a more confident 34-year old than you were a 24-year old, then, contrary to most contemporaries?
 At 24, I’d done my first film, Parineeta. It released when I was 25. But my confidence when Parineeta was going to be released was not very high, and there’s a background to that. 
    
In a certain sense, my confidence was a 10/10 when I entered the industry. It was after that, a couple of years later, when it went down, and then it came up again. 
    
I came in as a very self-assured person, from a traditional, very self-assured family. We, two sisters, were given the freedom to live our lives the way we wanted to, with unconditional acceptance. Jaise ho, achche ho. I used to be a fat child, but I was never made to feel like, you know… today, I hear of a 6-year-old child being made to diet! 
    

It used to be a joke, that whenever I walked in for an audition for an ad film, everyone said, she’s going to get it anyway. I’d got everything without really trying. I’d never even got a portfolio! Ek local studio mein my sister had done my makeup, got my best clothes, and got some pictures taken, which we sent for my first serial. From there, I went on to do Hum Paanch by word of mouth. Then someone said someone was looking for a fresh face for an ad, and that way ads happened. 

Wherever I walked in, I was only winning all the way. 

So when did the winning stop? 

When this phase of failure began. As is known, after this Malayalam film that I signed on with Mohanlal, Chakram, stopped midway, I was labelled jinxed. Other people who had promised to cast me in their projects backed off. I signed one Tamil film and left it, then signed another and got thrown out. They said, isko acting nahi aati, yeh ugly hai. Now that’s not easy for anyone, that’s really tough for a girl, and for a girl aspiring to be an actor — that’s death. They said, see, how can we have someone looking like you as the heroine of a film? 
    
I stopped looking at the mirror for months. 
    
Then, when I shot for a Euphoria video and dada (Pradeep Sarkar) said he’d make a film with me, I just laughed and thought to myself, so many people have said this, and then quickly thrown me out of their films. Anyways, I was told that the Euphoria video would probably not be released. To top it all, I went to Kerala for another film, where the shooting first kept getting deferred and then stopped — the producer had fled! By now, I’d begun to believe the jinx part. 

Your parents didn’t go to an astrologer by now? 

They did, actually. We had gone to a palmist once, before my television days. She said, ‘tum television karogi, lekin zyada kuch nahi’. And when I seemed to be about to be chucked out of the Tamil film, my parents took me to an astrologer. He said, whatever else happens, they won’t throw you out of the film. Well, they did. So astrology may be a science, and all that, but mera inn cheezon se vishwaas poori tarah se hatt gaya. But I held on very strongly to prayer. I would spend hours at the Sai Baba temple next to my house. Sometimes I would cry, saying “You dangled the carrot in front of me!” 

Dada (Pradeep Sarkar) began to talk to me those days. He called for another music video, for Pankaj Udhas, called me for ads. He was beginning to groom me and I didn’t even know it. 
    
When someone shows faith in you, you feel like you’re worth it. Which is why when we’re encouraged, we all blossom. 
    
So by the time I did Parineeta, I had gone through all of that.I came in saying,I have nothing to lose. It’s my first and last chance. Which is why I came across as very self-assured. 

And then, what happened? 

I began to be told, see, now you’ve established yourself as an actor, now you need to be doing what the typical Hindi film heroine has to do — the song and dance routines. The glam quotient. My heart is not in that; it doesn’t come naturally to me. So I started making an effort — and I didn’t realise that everyone couldn’t know everything. But those are things you only learn with experience. I began to try to adapt to the mould of the typical Hindi film heroine. And I was making a fool of myself. Thappad pad raha tha mujhe — and rightfully so. Har jagah se. And at that time, you begin to develop a sense of victimisation, the whole world is out to get you. It reached a stage where random people would walk up to me and say things. I was getting my manicure and this lady comes up to me and asks, ‘you’re so pretty, why do you wear such bad clothes?’ And I used to be like, who’s given you the right to talk to me like that? People would say I shouldn’t step out of the house because of the sort of clothes I wore.And I would take all of it seriously. I think at that time my confidence had again dipped to a 3. Today, I’m back at a 10!

That 3/10 stage — your choices were the talk of the town fairly regularly, weren’t they? 

See, I’d done Parineeta, Eklavaya, Munna Bhai — but I was being told that I hadn’t played the typical Hindi film heroine yet.So,in that phase, I went and signed some movies… Heyy Babyy for example, you know, and Kismat Konnection. Today, I think the problem lay not so much in the roles as in my approach to them. Mujhe laga, ki as an actor, I have been appreciated enough already, inn film on mein kya hai, I can sleepwalk through them. And that attitude was wrong. When people tell you that you need to do fluff, you begin to assume that fluff does not require any effort. 
    
Also, I was told over and over that ‘you’ve played the woman enough,now you need to play a girl’… firstly, I think I was born a woman. Secondly, I’d entered the industry at 24, not 16 — I was a woman. My mother always tells me that I was born a woman. I was always a little more grown up than others my age. Overly mature, perhaps, reserved. 

So you couldn’t have done an uninhibited role like Ishqiya, or the other such roles coming your way, when you were 18, then? 

Yes! And I really think that I am reverse ageing. I don’t know whether the roles are doing that to me, or that the roles are coming to me because of what I am now. I’m far more fun, far more easygoing now, even my family tells me that. I’m more like a girl now than I was when I was 16… I guess being a woman also meant someone who carries a certain weight… 
‘Weight’ may not quite be the word here — gravitas? 

Yes, gravitas. I think I’ve always had that. Not that one can do away with gravitas, but I think I’m far more easygoing now. Like you said, I couldn’t have done a role like Ishqiya when I was 16. Ishqiya perhaps was the beginning of me accepting the woman that I was — perhaps that’s why I could have all that fun. I was no longer denying any part of me. 
    
I was done with “play the girl, play the girl” — what does ‘play the girl’ mean? I’ve never been the chhui-mui, fluttering-the-eyelashes kind of girl! 
    
Today, when I look back, I realise that as an actor, you amplify everything. When the perceptions of people about you are larger than life, you begin to take their appreciation and their criticism also as larger than life. I had begun to amplify all that. I had begun to tell myself that ab toh karna hi hai, I have to prove to everyone that I can also do the other end of the spectrum. 
    
But I failed miserably. I got slapped around. The reason why clothes and my weight and my choice of films came under such criticism was because I was doing so much of it to prove a point. Maybe I was trying desperately to be what I was not, doing things that I was not enjoying doing. 
    
And I got slapped around so much that I went through a long period of deliberations — conversations with my family,with my close friends. 
    
And I summed up that I’m unhappy, and the whole world is unhappy with me. So let me at least make myself happy; I’ll probably never be able to have the world happy with me. And the moment I did that, accepting myself, I started becoming acceptable to everyone else. 

Your Ishqiyalack-of-inhibition pales before The Dirty Picture, though, doesn’t it? 

I always wanted to do a Dirty Picture somewhere… 
    
When I came under a lot of scrutiny for weight issues — you have to be a certain ‘type’ to be beautiful or sexy or attractive. It would always anger me.I may not have these-these-these features, but does that make me any less beautiful? I may not be ‘these’statistics,but does that make me any less sexy, less attractive? And somewhere The Dirty Picture gave that inner conflict voice. Suddenly, I had women walking up to me. Today, a girl came up to me and said, ‘thanks to you, post The Dirty Picture, I love my curves. Pehle lagta thaa ki kya kar ke main patli ho jaaongi; ab lagta hai, zaroorat nahi, main aise bhi achchi hoon!’ 
    
I never expected that sort of a takeway from my films.I didn’t want to make a point like that, but the point got made. Maybe because somewhere it was my own inner feeling — why,yaar, why, what if I’m not reed-thin? Or if I’m curvy? I’ve always been curvy — and I like my curves! What is wrong with it? Why is everyone saying, yeh karo, woh karo? You have to be healthy, fit, that’s it. It used to irritate me so much — and I think that’s why The Dirty Picture happened the way it did. 

You were not just non-defensive; you were positively belligerent in your posturing at that time. 

That’s because not just did I love it as an actor, but, as a woman, it gave voice to that inner conflict of mine. I was doing it for the role, but I was happy doing it for the role, you know? It was what I’d always wanted to do! During Dirty Picture, I was 12 kgs heavier than I’ve ever been — and then came Ghanchakkar, where Raj Kumar Gupta comes and says, please keep the weight! I was like, if this is not a ripple effect, what is? 
    
There’s so much pressure, you know. I know of girls who complain, my waist is still not 18, yaar… and I’m like, that’s not a waist, that’s a w-a-s-t-e! Please do not have a waist that’s 18! If you have it naturally, great, good for you, but if you don’t, good for you, too! 

You enjoy saying all that now, don’t you? 

I’m enjoying every moment of it. I keep asking myself, how can it get any better? I’ve got more than I ever hoped for, ever prayed for. 
    
And yet, I’m very, very greedy. 
    
And there’s that liberation of enjoying being me. Which is why this character — in Ghanchakkar — really struck a chord, again. Whatever her husband says, she says she’s fashionable, at least usska maanna yeh hai, ab aap bol lo aapko jo bolna hai!I’m loving it.Mujhe achcha lag raha hai — that’s all that’s in my control. But I notice that when I am that way, a lot more people begin to say about what I’m doing — ‘very nice!’ 
    
I guess when you love and accept yourself, the world loves and accepts you (laughs). 

But it takes time to find that sort of comfort level with the person you are, doesn’t it? 

Yes, it takes years! And I think I’m still fortunate that it took me only a few years. Sometimes it could take a lifetime. Some other people are just, what do you say, self-actualised, I guess. 
    
But I’m glad I went through all this. 

You would have had to fail at the conventional Bollywood heroine model first to succeed at this one, right? 

Yes! And somewhere I can trace it to the way we were brought up, to be proud of our individuality… My sister, she’s held her own wherever she has been.And she tells me that the only disturbing thing for her in that phase when I was trying to be someone else and failing, was that I was not able to hold my own. 
   
I don’t want to be preachy, but I find it so disturbing that parents today want kids to be a certain way — there’s no freedom. 

You couldn’t have done The Dirty Picture at 21, being the sort of person you were then, could you? 

No! I was the most inhibited person. If you see my body language then and my body language now, there’s such a marked difference! That’s what I’ve been telling you — if ‘girl’means carefree, I’m probably more of a girl now. I read somewhere that Capricorns reverse-age,so probably it’s that (laughs)! 

So, at 34, there’s no nostalgia for 17? 

No. I’m having far more fun than I’ve ever had, really. 
    
And no, that does not mean that from being a woman, I’m regressing into a girl — I’m still a woman. I’m having fun as a woman. And if someone thinks I’m saying you need to be a ‘girl’ to have fun — no. No. 
    
Oh God, I hope I don’t sound like such a narcissist (hysterical outburst of laughter)!