After three releases last year including Poster Boys, Shreyas Talpade’s Hindi remake of a Marathi film which features the Deol brothers, Sonali Kulkarni will be seen in Naseeruddin Shah starrer Hope Aur Hum . The film, directed by Sudip Bandyopadhyay, is being widely touted as Kulkarni’s “comeback” to Hindi cinema but one wonders if the term is a blatant oversimplification of her career’s trajectory. “I don’t blame the media for saying that,” says the actor good-naturedly over a telephone chat. “I’m celebrating my career. I’m getting to work in different mediums, [and] different languages.”
Hope Aur Hum is the tale of a tight-knit family, and Kulkarni plays a mother who has an integral role in the journeys the film embarks upon. “Aditi is a constructive part of every track,” says the actor, whose role furthers the stories of a father-in-law holding on to an old photocopy machine that doesn’t work well, a brother-in-law swept off his feet in an accidental phone call romance, and a young son overcoming his fears. “I liked portraying this [heterogeneous] mess of a family,” Kulkarni shares, “because we come from different planets, but ultimately we accept that we want to be a family. So, that ‘being together’ was beautiful.”
Role models
What Kulkarni was most grateful for, however, was getting to work with Naseeruddin Shah who plays her father-in-law. The two have a tense relationship on screen, possibly because of the patriarch’s inability to let go of the past. Kulkarni has worked with the senior actor in projects like BBD , Kolkata Junction , in fact Shah’s debut in Marathi films was in a Kulkarni starrer Deool (2011), a film set in rural Maharashtra about the commercialisation of religion. But this will be the first time the two share screen space. “I told my director I don’t want any fees for this film,” says Kulkarni , “because [this] is a 100-crore opportunity for me!” The actor adds that she admires the way Shah reinvents himself even as he nears the semi-centennial of his career. “I love how fearlessly he works with generations and different movies,” says Kulkarni, “because cinema is changing, but Naseer sir is rock solid!”
Family ties
This array of ages and styles that Kulkarni credits Shah for working with is condensed into the cast of Hope Aur Hum, which includes Aamir Bashir, Naveen Kasturia along with child actors Kabir Sajid and Virti Vaghani. “It’s a beautiful mix,” Kulkarni says about her colleagues, sharing that the cast’s diversity brings tones of innocence and varying energies that ultimately props the simple situations of the film up as its heroes.
Talking about heroes, it comes up that the actor had once mentioned not being too bothered by the screen time her role gave her. She bursts out laughing, “I’m generally not so unselfish!” Pointing out her smaller role in Mission Kashmir (2000) where she played Hrithik Roshan’s mother, an actor who is the same age as her, she says, “My role was remembered. I had never feared taking up a role if the story was interesting.” Ask her if she ever wished that went any differently, and pat comes the answer, “I don’t repent my decision.”
Kulkarni takes pride in the variety of roles she has portrayed – from mother of the “country’s heartthrob”, to doctor and social worker Mandakini Amte in Dr. Prakash Baba Amte (2014), and Cheluvi, a girl who can transform into a tree, in her eponymous 1992 debut with director Girish Karnad. “I think any actor would like to be in my shoes,” she says.
In what seems like a celebration of Kulkarni’s completion of 25 years in cinema, one of her 2017 releases, Kachcha Limbu , won Best Marathi Film at the National Awards. Which proves that Kulkarni can’t have a comeback this week, because she never really left.
