Kalki Koechlin On Growing Up And Letting Go

Kalki Koechlin has found that some things just get better in your thirties. She tells Deepa Menon what getting older has taught her about politics, acting and sex.

- Deepa Menon

Most of the time, 32-year-old Kalki Koechlin feels like an old lady. Her joys are sedate ones: a cup of tea, a long soak with a nice book, craft projects for the house. She can’t bear to sit idle for long and wonders at people who have time to argue all day on Twitter. She tends to forget things and has deep conversations with her cat. When she does feel the tug of FOMO, it’s over something drama-geeky, like Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary, a yearlong, worldwide celebration that’s further complicating her manager’s already tricky job. “I can’t resist so many things,” she sighs.

Any mellow vibe Koechlin projects dissipates when you consider the pace at which she lives. Like any Hindi film actor of discerning tastes, she has dry spells; she uses that time to drift onto another stage. Last year, she took six months off to write and direct a play, The Living Room. “I feel like I don’t exist if I’m not working. I can’t lie on a beach for three days. More than two days and I’m like, what am I doing? There are so many things wrong with the world, I need to do something!” Among her major film projects currently are Konkona Sen Sharma’s directorial debut, A Death In The Gunj, and Soni Razdan’s Love Affair, based on the Nanavati murder case of 1959. For the Bard, she’s writing an essay on Ophelia for the British Council, shooting a reimagining of Romeo & Juliet with Adil Husain in Delhi and touring with Rajat Kapoor’s version of Macbeth in the US. Then, there’s Azmaish, a crowd-funded documentary she’s working on with Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar.