Shabana Azmi Celebrating Womanhood

She was part of the Parallel Cinema movement in Hindi films back in the ’70s and at 65 the woman still stands unparalleled. The thespian, star and philanthropist Shabana Azmi talks about celebrating womanhood and more with Vanessa Viegas.

- Vanessa Viegas

When we speak of real life stories, more often than not the climax is a half-truth, there are certain liberties taken and the story is doctored. Did that happen with Neerja too? What made you say yes to this film?

Firstly I liked the script, I thought it was a story that needed to be told. It would be inspiring particularly for girls because Neerja is an ordinary girl who was able to look fear in the eye and do an act of immense courage. But what I did feel obligated by was, because it is based on a real life character and that the family had placed their trust in us by sharing, what for them, was a very difficult acceptance of the tragedy that happened. So what happens is when you make a film, a film can’t be a replica of reality. There are going to be liberties taken and the family can be betrayed, but this was not how it was. The fact that they trusted us completely made it that much more our responsibility that we should not betray them. When I met Neerja’s mother Ramaji, the film was nowhere in the making at that time. I was asked by Neerja’s family to come and present the award at the Neerja Bhanot event. When I met Ramaji, I almost instantly liked her. I was struck by her spiritedness and warmth. And now that I had to play her part it was very important for me to keep that spirit alive. So even when you see Rama in her more regular avatar, she’s very concerned about her daughter eating on time or sleeping on time; you see that spark even in the mundane. It was not required of me to be like her or speak like her, because that’s not how she’s constructed. But had I not met her I wouldn’t have played the part like I did. So we needed to ensure that we didn’t betray the family’s trust. It was a difficult thing to do in that sense.