So it’s Miss Havisham this time?” I ask her. “Begum Hazrat boliye. It’s Fitoor , not Great Expectations ,” Tabu replies, adding that she hadn’t read the Charles Dickens classic in preparation for her latest role in the new Abhishek Kapoor film. “I recently said in an interview that people expect me to be reading Shakespeare even on the treadmill,” she laughs, referring obviously to her previous Bard films Haider (based on Hamlet ) and Maqbool ( Macbeth ). But no baggage of literary history for her, she prefers bringing her own reading and interpretation to the characters. So, all that she is excited about is the fact that she has had a whole lot to do in Fitoor . “There’s nothing lacking in the Begum for me as a performer,” she says.
The actress is friendly and in good humour as she relaxes inside the vanity van in Bandra’s Mehboob Studio. She remembers Sangeetha Devi, our colleague in The Hindu , Hyderabad, who she has met very often in her home town. She talks about how she finds pre-film interviews limiting and understands a journalist’s dilemma: what do you ask an actor when you haven’t seen a forthcoming film or performance? “It’s like me asking you about your son or daughter who I haven’t even met once. Doing a question-answer kind of interview doesn’t come naturally to me. I like nice, baggage-free conversations,” she says.
So we let it a casual, untailored, free-flowing chit-chat about her unusual career graph, doing things on her own terms, being in the mainstream and yet not quite, and being in the limelight and yet seeking privacy. “It’s in my temperament, in my personality. I would have been so irrespective of which field I would have opted to be in. It’s just that it gets more pronounced, draws more attention in a glamorous field like cinema,” she says.
There has been no overt design to her career, or so she claims. For her it has not been about X leading to Y but all about a coming together of various things. What she likes is that her stint in cinema has taken her places, given her experiences that she wouldn’t have otherwise been able to encapsulate in one life. “But I do take credit for my work, what I do, what I create, the energy I bring to the characters,” she says, “They are not readymade when offered to me. They become what they do after I have done them. I give life to them.”
Instinct is the key
There has been an eclectic set of roles dotting her filmography: good, bad and indifferent. What made her pick them up? There are no ground rules here; just being instinctive has been the key. “I must want to do them, what matters is whether they make sense to me,” she says.
But it does require a tremendous inner security and surety in someone as young as her to have agreed to play Katrina Kaif’s mother in Fitoor . “ Guts ki to kami nahin hai mujh mein (I don’t lack courage),” she laughs, but says that her vanity and ego as a heroine have also been well taken care of by the filmmaker. “I have been shot beautifully. I get to wear great costumes,” she says.
So, basically, it has been all about seeking out the different even in the usual. “It’s about doing things my way even when it comes to doing the regular stuff,” she says. There’s no fun for her in doing what everyone else is doing, even when it comes to fashion and clothes. “It’s not about making a point. I just don’t find it interesting to follow a rule or trend in any sphere of life,” she says.
Does she ever regret picking up a role? Or nixing an offer? “I am sure there are many in both cases.” No, she isn’t telling us more. Any role she would have wanted to do play differently in retrospect? “Almost always. There’s no end to wanting to do things in a different way. Most creative people are like that but over the years I have learnt to be content and move on,” she says.
You see a director in her, you tell her. “Lots of people have told me that,” she says, especially cinematographer Manmohan Singh while shooting Maachis . But she thinks it would be a chore to do it for the sake of doing it. “Maybe if I get a very good story I will take the plunge,” she says.
For now she will continue to not put her fingers in too many pies, only do one film at a time, one that excites her; and gives her lots of time for herself. What does she do when not working? “I won’t tell you,” she cuts you short again. “I have nothing interesting to say. I am a lazy person who doesn’t lead an interesting life beyond cinema,” she adds. You cook? “I hate it. There’s a false perception that I’d be a good cook. I only eat. I love good food and can sit and eat for hours together,” she says.
She isn’t too much into reading. Books, the big tomes, intimidate her. But a signed copy of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is a prized possession. A day is well spent with the dog, doing yoga or laughing at silly things with family and friends. She loves travelling and watching films; Indian, not so much the international ones. “I always think of myself as an audience before an actress. After all, one has grown up and reached here watching films,” she says. Viewing a film is all about company of friends, she finds it boring to see them alone and watching films in theatres is all about that tub of popcorn — salted not caramel at that.
“I love popcorn, can’t concentrate on a film without it,” she says. But spending free time for her is ultimately about not doing anything, as she quotes Ghalib: “ Subah hoti hai shaam hoti hai, umr yun hi tamaam hoti hai ”. This is an actress who has no regrets about letting life just flow by.
