It’s been a little over a fortnight since the release of the Hindi version of Drishyam . The reception to Tabu’s performance as IG Meera Deshmukh has been warm. Tabu has made it a habit to shine in every role she takes up and critics and moviegoers don’t like to settle for anything less.
“I feel gratitude when I come across reviews that appreciate my work,” says Tabu. There’s a surge of excitement, she says, “but it takes a while to assimilate all this. When the response is good, I feel ‘izzat rehgayi’.” The world sees her as an exceptional performer but she is yet to reach a stage where she can sit back and assess herself in a detached manner.
IG Meera Deshmukh is not a character the audience easily empathises with. She isn’t a straight jacketed cop who cracks down on law breakers. Her demonstration of power, in fact, earns sympathy for the protagonist (Ajay Devgn in Hindi). “Meera is ruthless; she had to be overbearing given her circumstances. I’d give credit to the writer for having written such a character and giving the story this premise. I was thrilled when some people messaged after watching the film, saying they were scared of me. Someone even said Meera should visit a psychiatrist,” says Tabu, with an unmistakable glee. Meera is a stark departure from the roles she had done in Chandni Bar, Astitva or Haider , which drew sympathy.
She knew the makers of the Malayalam film and had hoped to do the role of the IG, enacted by Asha Sharath, if ever the film was remade in Hindi. By the time the Hindi version released, a clique of film enthusiasts had already watched the Telugu, Kannada and Tamil versions. “The younger generation is watching cinema across languages and it’s tough to fool people and make them believe I’m doing something new. Yet, when I’m acting, I don’t let these factors play on my mind. Acting is a personal expression and there’s a certain benchmark of quality people expect. The way I see it, Meera is not vulnerable and remains emotionally distant even in the end, amidst all the pathos.”
Tabu has finished shooting for Missing , a horror thriller with Manoj Bajpayee, and will be seen in a guest appearance in Talvar , a fictional take on Arushi Talwar case, and in Abhishek Kapoor’s Fitoor , an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, in which she plays Begum, a take off on the eccentric Miss Havisham.
She calls Missing “a practical film”, having completed shooting her part in 21 days in Mauritius. “It’s a different format of a whodunit that unfolds in a hotel room,” she says.
Maqbool ’s Nimmi, Haider ’s Ghazala and now Fitoor ’s Begum are all adaptations of classics for which filmmakers sought her out. Such roles of merit are hard to come by. Ask her if she feels disillusioned when she reads scripts that don’t match up to these and she says, “We actors make different characters our own. At times I accept films for the characters, for people I associate with, money or all the factors.” Of late, she’s been juggling a few films. Are all these factors coming together more often now? “Maybe I’ve relaxed my criteria,” she laughs.
Every now and then, newer actors tell her ‘you all have done so much; there was so much scope then’. But Tabu and her ilk, unlike the newer set, didn’t have the grooming and image building exercises available now. “Every era has its own essence. This generation also makes mistakes, despite all the training. One can’t avoid that journey. We all learnt through our journey and the experience stays.”
