The photographer and I barge into Jubilee Room at Sun-n-Sand hotel in Juhu just as Kangana Ranaut is getting ready to shoot a TV interview. Little do we know that it will set the tone, not just for our 60 minutes with her, but for the entire day. As we wait in queue, we sip on masala chai and stare at the sea, perilously calm, hours before the chaos of Gauri Visarjan will begin in the evening.
Meanwhile, inside Jubilee Room, the TV interview has broken the peace and quiet of Kangana’s world. “She got very intense talking about Hrithik (Roshan),” we are told. The possibility that we will have to contend with her bad mood looms rather large now. Just a few days ago, she had ripped into the Roshans in another TV interview.
She comes out, by the pool, for a quick photo shoot for us, and immediately rushes back into the hotel to meet Anupam Kher. The photographer is not happy with the meagre six frames he has managed to capture. I wonder if she will have time for even six of my questions.
Inside the huge conference hall, I sit in one corner; my chair facing another where she will, hopefully, sit to field my questions. There are similar geometric seating arrangements in various corners of the silent and frosty hall, soon to be occupied by her staff.
There is a wry smile on her face when she enters, her curls tied back in a ponytail. Tall, lean and lithe, she is in black boots and a striped short dress with an interesting cut of sleeves that the fashion-challenged yours truly can’t quite identify.
Her face has little make-up, and she is comfortable in her skin, casually pointing to the scar between her brows, acquired recently while shooting a battle sequence for the forthcoming biopic Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi .
Rebel rouser
‘Don’t bring up Hrithik’ the voice inside my head roars. I comply.
“You are known for picking unconventional roles and films. What’s so exceptional about Simran (her next)?” I start off on a very safe note. “My characters might seem unconventional for the industry. But they are extremely ordinary people. Our mainstream cinema has not been into the lives of (ordinary) people the way it should have,” Kangana says.
In Simran , she will play a young Gujarati girl, part of the housekeeping staff in an American hotel. The movie is about her thirst to make money, her ambitions, and chasing the good life. “It’s a beautiful story of people who make mistakes but are able to redeem themselves. (Usually) there’s so much shaming that you can’t go back to being normal… to the warmth of the family. But you can’t always live on the edge either.”
Kangana looks unhurried and relaxed, thinking her responses through, measuring her words carefully. My worst fears are allayed. I will get beyond the six questions, it appears.
Does the film pick up the baton where Queen left it? “ Queen has a very likeable character at the centre. But Simran is brash, flamboyant. She doesn’t mind crossing the line for her ambitions. She doesn’t mind breaking the pattern and then picking up the broken pieces of her life and starting all over again.
‘She has a lot of grit. She is unstoppable. How do you chain the beast? She is independent in a fierce way. She doesn’t have any timidness.” She rattles on and as I listen, I realise how each one of these qualities describes Kangana herself to a T.
Most of her on-screen avatars, like her, have been anything but “regular”. Right from Gangster , her first film, almost a decade ago, she has not been your standard heroine; no porcelain-perfect diva, more extremely flawed girl-next-door.
She sees herself as a far bigger rebel in reality. I am reminded of a fat cushion I spotted in the living room of her Khar home a few years ago with the message ‘Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed...’
Her ground rule for choosing a role is simple: “I don’t want to invest my time in things that don’t add up to anything significant. So why do a role that anybody can?” Sometimes in the quest for a good role, things may not turn out well and failure can get depressing. “Even if you are ready to move on, it reflects in your turnover, the money you make, the brands you sign. It makes a significant dent in your graph.”
She remembers hitting rock bottom just before Queen. Her work was not getting appreciated, offers were drying up. It was also when she directed a short film of her own called The Touch . “That added to the thirst in me,” she recalls.
The restlessness continues. She wants to direct, tap her full creative potential. “It can get limiting to always be at the receiving end of a call for a role or a script. It’s not about demanding (roles) but creating them. It has to be more about doing than asking.”
No Khan do
Growing up in small-town Bhambla (Surajpur) in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, in a family of politicians and bureaucrats, Kangana never wanted to be an actress. She was preparing for medical and engineering entrance tests, and wanted to paint, dance, do theatre, learn French.
The exposure to films was limited. The first film she saw was Devdas in Class IX. A brief stint as a model in New Delhi and theatre training under Asmita’s Arvind Gaur eventually paved the way for Bollywood.
It was daunting initially to be the ‘outsider’ in Mumbai, she says. Tumultuous personal relationships — with Aditya Pancholi and Adhyayan Suman — also took their toll. As did the constant criticism of her small-town roots and ways. There was also her sister Rangoli, an acid attack survivor, to be taken care of as she went through multiple surgeries and rehabilitation.
Kangana says that people from Hindi-medium schools, from villages and small towns, are given short shrift in the industry. “The money has stayed with the rich for too long, and now that it is slipping out of their hands, it’s bothering them. My background can’t determine my capabilities and skills. Whether you like it or not, I will get ahead in life,” she asserts forcefully. And she has. She is a top heroine, but her résumé does not boast of a single film alongside any of the three Khans. That’s rather remarkable.
There is much talk of her arrogance and her difficult personality. Her outspokenness has only added to this reputation. “I say things as they are. I have been told to be politically correct at interviews.
‘All actresses are so politically correct that it has become a yawn fest. Why should I cover up for people? Truth has its own power. It reveals itself,” she goes on, but also admits that it can isolate you, make you not the most liked person around. Does controversy court Kangana or does Kangana court controversy? “Who would have imagined something as basic as nepotism will become a controversy,” she asks, referring to the recent Karan Johar-Saif Ali Khan episode.
As far as she has seen, nepotism has been a fact of life. “We have been obviously celebrating only film families for years now. Even otherwise, it is common everywhere to put in a word for your relatives.”
The victim card?
The fact that her bluntness and lack of diplomacy close doors and affect work relationships doesn’t seem to bother her. “It’s not that anyone can make or break you. I don’t need godfathers or mentors. I am in a space where all I want is some dignity to my work.”
The face-off with the Roshans refuses to die. Some people say that it is she who keeps opening this particular can of worms.
Kangana is quietly furious when I suggest this. “The truth is that the father and son made fools of themselves. They claimed there was a third party I was having an affair with in his (Hrithik’s) name. He claimed he would expose me, he never did. I too, like everybody else, want to know when he will expose me.”
It’s been almost four hours since we began. And I am still not done with Kangana for the day. At a film screening later that evening, they are talking of her Hrithik rage — has she gone too far? Is she playing the victim card much too often? For others, she is the personification of ‘gutsy’, challenging the industry hierarchy.
A few days later, and discussions about her are still raging on my Twitter and Facebook wall. In all likelihood, by the time this piece finds its way into the newspaper, she will still be the talk of the town.
It’s called stirring the hornet’s nest and no one knows how to do that better than Kangana Ranaut. And we haven’t come to the end of her story yet.
namrata.joshi@thehindu.co.in
