A mind of her own

At a point during the conversation, Richa Chadda quotes a line from Kaifi Azmi’s famous poem Aurat. She wants to be a woman of substance, just like Azmi describes: Teri hasti bhi hain ek cheez jawaani hi nahin [your personality is also an entity, not just your youth]. The conversation—now deep—will soon turn dark. But let’s talk about films first.

“I always wanted to do films. If I just wanted to do theatre, I would have been in Delhi,” says Chadda. Delhi is where her dreams found their footing—doing product modelling and plays while studying history at St Stephen’s College. But then her dreams grew celluloid wings and she flew down to Mumbai, making her debut with a small role in Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!

“Films have a wider reach. You can do so much more; you can say so much more. You get more fame,” says Chadda. But fame, for her, has a function. “Whatever little spotlight is on you, you can divert it to something meaningful. That’s the kind of wholesome stardom I want. I have always worked on substance because I want to be relevant beyond my youth.”

Perhaps, that is why, Chadda had no qualms playing an ageing woman in Gangs of Wasseypur, her “first big film”. She didn’t want her age to dictate and define her career. “We have to create that space and mindset that women are relevant beyond their youth, even outside patriarchy. I have a say; I have a brain,” says Chadda, 30.

Before our talk turns serious, Chadda is chirpy, looking for something to eat after a busy day. Her first production venture, Khoon Aali Chithi (Written in Blood), a short film, had released that morning, and she is busy promoting it. Directed by Rupinder Inderjit, the film is a teenage romance set in the backdrop of insurgency in Punjab. The Punjabi film comes from Inderjit’s personal experience—in the 1990s, he would be terrified of a mere bike ride with his elder brother as random people were being killed in fake encounters. “From the fear of the ride back home, he developed this story. And it comes through in the film. Here you are, leading a normal life, wanting to write a love letter to some teenage crush and then something unexpected happens,” says the Amritsar-born Chadda. (Her parents moved out of the city when she was two, owing to the unrest following the Khalistan movement.) “That’s life, you know. You are laughing one minute and the next minute you are dead. Death doesn’t come with a warning,” she says. But that’s not the message of the film. “The message is just that civilians get caught in the cross-fire. Whether it is the Punjab of the 1990s, the Kashmir of today or the Chhattisgarh or the northeast of today, the common person is the casualty. The person who doesn’t read the news, [who] doesn’t care about which party is in power, they are the ones who are the most affected. It is very unfair.”

Incidentally, her films, like Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 1 and 2) and Masaan, have often portrayed variations of death. Chadda, however, has a different take on death. “I always feel bad about the people who are left behind. And that is the quote that we have used in Khoon Aali Chithi—that the statistics never count the number of families destroyed by such killings,” she says. And, she doesn’t consider death dark. “The minute you are born, you are preparing to die,” she says. “I think this obsession or vanity with youth, especially in the glamour business and now even otherwise, is absolutely a gross fear of death. It is so illogical.”

She recalls her visit to the Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi while shooting Gangs of Wasseypur. Though women are not allowed entry, she went there discreetly. She saw bodies being burnt, and family members performing last rites. “For most, it would have been a moment of repulsion or disgust, but I didn’t feel any disgust. It was a strange experience,” she says. “The thought that struck me was that it is the same body that we are taking to the gym every day, perfuming it, waxing it, grooming it, and it has to end up here, like this. After some time it won’t look like what it is right now. It will just be a bag of bones. It really changed how I looked at death. I look at death as a passage of the soul.”

In the same vein, she also talks about Masaan, which she considers a special film. But the film wasn’t easy for her. “I was very irritated all the time during the shoot. I used to complain a lot,” she says. But looking back, she realises it was because she is not a person to suffer in silence like Devi Pathak, the character she portrayed. “I am patient and kind, and compassionate, too, but that doesn’t mean I will take anything. I would give it back. Devi couldn’t.”

Even in the industry, which is dealing with the nepotism debate, she hasn’t let anyone affect her to a level where she feels helpless. “People say the industry is very hostile, but I have made some great friends, really reliable ones, who will look out for me and be there,” she insists. But it has been a struggle and still is. The struggle is “picking the projects you want to do, saying no to things you don’t believe in, sometimes even saying no to big money.”

Three of her anticipated films—Sudhir Mishra’s Aur Devdas, Pooja Bhatt’s Cabaret and Jia Aur Jia with Kalki Koechlin—haven’t released. “You feel bad because you have worked so hard, especially on a film like Cabaret, where you had to go through a complete image change and learn dance. It becomes annoying, more so because you had nothing to do with the delay.” Cabaret has been delayed because of a fight between two producers.

She is looking forward to Inside Edge—a web series, one of the first from Amazon Video in India. The show follows the ups and downs of a cricket team, and has a dash of Bollywood, too. Chadda plays an actor whose last two films have flopped. “She is suddenly in an insecure space. While I was shooting for it, I realised how it was taking a toll on me. I was genuinely feeling insecure,” she says.

Chadda realised it was time to detach, and therefore took up Penguin’s offer to write a book. “I used to write these blogs before and it is just taking it ahead. The book will have a series of personal observations. It will deal with themes that we experience—whether it is misogyny, latent racism or anything else.” Her first chapter is about how selfies have changed the way we look at ourselves.

Besides, the sequel to Fukrey, which won her accolades as the quirky Bholi Punjaban, is set to release later this year. But acting in it was a breeze for her. “It is a comedy,” she says, “so it wasn’t taking a toll on me like the other films.”