As expected, a conversation with Kalki Koechlin begins on a wholesome note. As soon as we sit down for a meal together, she says, “I don’t look like it, but I eat a lot.” The flexibility she shows in her choice of roles reflects in her choice of cuisines as well. From Kashmiri to Chettinad and from Japanese to French, Koechlin has a taste for all of them. She talks of her fondness for yakhni pulao and butter chicken in one sentence. “As I come from south India, I have a special affinity with spices.” Whether it is rasam or wasabi sauce, the actor likes it hot.
For this meal, however, Koechlin opts for Mediterranean cuisine with a mezze sampler. It is an assortment of hummus, baba ganoush, tabbouleh and beet root labneh with grilled pita, marinated olives, feta and falafel.
At once, she picks up a falafel (deep-fried ball made with ground chickpeas and fava beans) and calls it a Spanish vada. In fact, even when she’s on sets, Koechlin says sge thinks about food! “You think about food but very rarely do you get good food on the sets,” she says. “We are lucky that we get to travel a lot with our films and hence get to taste different cuisines. Like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara i ntroduced me to Spanish food. But if you are a vegetarian, Spain is not for you for they offer fish to vegetarians!” she chuckles. The actor says she knows she needs to be healthy. “So I drink carrot, beetroot and apple juice mixed together and of course lots of coconut water.”
‘Rather starve than cook’
Her appreciation of food and need to eat healthy hasn’t resulted in motivation to enter the kitchen. “I would rather go hungry than cook,” she chuckles before adding that she’d prefer baking though. “I can’t cook on a daily basis. But I can bake bread, apple pie and all sorts of cakes.”
Having spent her childhood in Puducherry, Koechlin has fondness for its cuisine. “It is a mixture of French, Tamil and Vietnamese food. Spring rolls, fish curries and French baked potato with cheese dominate the scene. At home, I love to have fish prepared in coconut milk. And, then there is rasam which I could have throughout the year.”
For her last release, Waiting , the actor shot in Kochi and had her fill of fish curries.
The film was was appreciated by critics. Reflecting on the experince while munching on tabbouleh, Koechlin says that director Anu Menon and she had to rework the character. “We changed the lingo. We needed to arrive at the weird Hindi that a Mumbai girl speaks. Words like pakaoed entered the vocabulary. We also worked on the look. She wanted Tara to look desi , with kohl eyes, sharp eyebrows and black and curly hair. It was a different experience for me.”
Drawing from life
As for getting into the emotional core of the character, Koechlin maintains that she draws from life and from other people’s stories. “But I think, ultimately, it has a lot to do with putting yourself in that situation while rehearsing with your co-actors which is possible when you have a co-actor like Naseer.”
Her process, she says, is about being genuine to the experience. “I don’t think you can prepare yourself for a scene like the first time you see your husband in a coma,” she says. “You cannot plan how you would react. I have had situations where my family members had to be in hospital for a long time but when I am actually shooting I don’t recall those moments. Those memories are useful when you are preparing and rehearsing. By the time I am on the set, I am the character and not Kalki. So I could not refer to Kalki’s personal experiences.”
Tara, Koechlin continues, was a reflection on how fast-paced life has become. “We don’t internalise ourselves very much.” But then it could be seen as a stereotype of this generation. “Anything can become a stereotype. We are all stereotypes. When we look at somebody in a salwar kameez we often say she is a Punjabi aunty type, a short skirt evokes a different reaction. It depends on how you play the character. If you find the humanness of that character, it will work.”
Similarly, the actor, who comes from a strong theatre background says, melodrama is often misunderstood. “The same issue can be expressed in a subtle or melodramatic way. It depends on its treatment. It changes from independent to commercial cinema. In both cases, you have to be true to the character, you have to believe the emotion: only the ways of expression are different. The truth of the emotion remains the same,” she says, citing the example of the recent Rajat Kapoor adaptation of Macbeth where she plays a dark clown. “Dark humour is hard. The flow of the play is such that the three witches go on to become lady Macbeths.”
Theatre, particularly plays like these, keeps Koechlin on her toes. “I don’t take many holidays and when you enjoy your work, you don’t feel like taking a break. I am lucky that I get to do what I want to. There are times when I have no work. So when you have lots of work, you better do it.”
But this attitude doesn’t always work with the family. “My mother usually stays with me for two months and after that we fight and she goes to stay with my brother,” says the actor. “And her concerns start from why I work so much. She would complain that I don’t spend time with her, why I put so much stuff in the refrigerator….”
After the initial reluctance, the actor of French origin is now being accepted by all kinds of filmmakers. She feels she broke into the commercial mould with Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara . It is another matter that most could not still pronounce her surname right. “I have put it in Devanagari on my Twitter account but it doesn’t help.”
Meanwhile, we talk about how women-centric films are on the rise. “I hope it is not just a trend and is going to stay. It is a natural evolution. And it is not just actors; we now find a lot of female crew members and DOPs.”
But, the actor is careful to underline that she is for “gender balance” and not “star balance.” She’s alluding to directors’ penchant for a particular set of female actors who have delivered hits. “It should not be about star worship.”
The increasing presence of women crew members ensures that there is a female perspective, she says.“If Waiting had a male director, he would have had a different perspective and it could be equally relevant as well. My point is at present we have many male perspectives and [we] need a balance.” Indeed!
“There are times when I have no
work. So when you have lots of work, you better do it”
