Mothers & daughters

Kalki Koechlin plays a distraught daughter coming to terms with her mother's dementia in Goldfish. She chats with Tanzim Pardiwalla about the experience

- Tanzim Pardiwalla

Anyone who has ever had the rare privilege of watching Kalki Koechlin, best known for her roles in Dev.D and Margarita With A Straw, among other films, in a theatre play will tell you that when the spotlight hits her, it's impossible not to get mesmerised by her presence. So her latest role in theatre director Pushan Kripalani's film Goldfish seems like the perfect project for her acting prowess to shine. The film sees her at her most vulnerable as a young woman navigating her relationship with her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's. For Kalki, this came at an interesting trajectory in her life. The actress opened up about finding a balance between her personal and professional lives on a Zoom call all the way from Spain...

DEV.D WAS YOUR BREAKOUT ROLE; IT WON YOU A FILMFARE AWARD. HOW MUCH WOULD YOU SAY HAS CHANGED SINCE THEN?

While filming Dev.D you could wake me up in the middle of the night and I would know my lines. I would be able to say them; I was so nervous about lines. Now I’m much more concerned with the meaning of the lines, so it’s not so much about getting the right words. It’s about getting the meaning across and that helps a lot. Of course, language has helped. Getting a proper Hindi teacher, to be able to speak properly, helps a lot. I also know that it's healthy for me to counter whatever I'm doing. So if I'm playing an intense role, then after I get home, I need to shake that off and go for a swim, do some exercise, or even just watch a light show. Something that will just change my energy. I started understanding the need to balance it out.