T hree measuring cups get placed on the table as we settle down for an interview over lunch. Her third small meal of the day, Kajal says these cups are the only things that keep her sane, for she has “zero self control”. It’s a part of her job she’s learnt to accept, along with “hundreds of sleepless nights and the fact that my life, pretty much, is being lived on a plane”.
Not that she has too many reasons to complain. Her career couldn’t have been at a better place, with Ajith’s unnamed 57th film and Chiranjeevi’s 150th in line. Not willing to disclose much about these films, she remembers an incident from the sets of the Ajith-starrer. “When on sets, I noticed that Ajith would only refer to me as Kajal ji, though I’m way junior to him. I found this strange, so I asked him why he doesn’t just call me Kajal. He said, ‘Personally, I’d call you Kajal, but on set, I will only call you ji . Unfortunately, people tend to follow the actions of the male protagonist. So if I call you Kajal ji, everyone else will start calling you that. I want certain things in our industry to change, and I want women to be treated with respect.’ I was blown away. It totally worked. Everyone calls me ji now.”
She looks at such incidents as an added bonus in her decade-long career she’d planned to “quit after getting one film on the CV”. Cinema, now, is not just her number one priority, but an ongoing love affair. “I guess I would have been just as committed to my work, even if I’d pursued an MBA, but you need a certain madness to survive in cinema. It’s not a nine-to-five job, and it’s impossible to cut off from it. It’s easier when you’re in love with it.”
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But this “love” hasn’t always been there. Remembering a period of transition, she says, “I worked without a break for the first six or seven years of my career, missing out on every important function that’d been happening at home. This had gotten to me, and when my sister was to get married, I’d decided that I would take a long break. I was having the time of my life at her wedding, but even so, people assumed that I had quit cinema… some even assumed that it was I who was getting married. But when I resumed shoot after the break, I realised how much I’d missed it. It was like going back home. I guess I needed this distance to discover my fondness for it all… even the measuring cups.”
Yet, she asks why the industry works the way it does, especially when it comes to actresses. “During that break, I kept wondering if everything would change when I got back. Just three months off cinema and I worried that I’d lost my place there. Just compare that to an actor… three months off the radar and they only get bigger in the minds of their fans. For an actress, three months away and you’re finished?”
Even after all these years, she feels her career is always at conflict with her life back home in Mumbai. “Recently, my mother had to undergo a surgery. I flew back home to be with her the day before the operation, but had to return the next day for a shoot. After I’d shot for a scene, I went to the monitor to see how I’d acted. It was a particularly light scene and I was surprised at how naturally I’d acted in it. It was like my mother’s surgery hadn’t affected me at all. I felt terrible… was I a bad daughter?”
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