Kalki Subramaniam’s phone has been busy for the past few days. The transgender-rights activist, artist and actor’s first Hindi feature film, Kalashnikov, received the Best Film Jury Honors at the Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival at New Delhi recently. “I received a lot of appreciation and I am overwhelmed. I am the first trans-gender to play a lead role in Bollywood.”
Kalki has earlier played a transwoman dancer in Narthagi , a film by Vijayapadma in 2011, and made a special appearance in Sarkar directed by AR Murugadoss in 2018.
Kalashnikov is directed by Balakrishna P Subbiah, who “has worked in maby Bollywood films as a visual-effects director. This is his directorial début,” explains Kalki. “He was in search of a transwoman with a dark complexion. I think he saw my profile on social media and came to Coimbatore to meet me in October 2016. After both of us were convinced, he handed me the script with the dialogues for my part.” Kalki plays one of the three lead characters along with Deepak Sharma and Mahesh Udeshi.
Kalki had just two weeks to prepare for the role. “I discussed the dialogues with my cousins who are fluent in Hindi. This helped me understand the emotions of the character better.” The 45-day shoot was at Mohali, Punjab. “Most of the scenes were shot in a small hut in the middle of a wheat field. My Hindi improved there as everyone else other than Balakrishna and I spoke Hindi.”
The three lead characters of the film represent three shades - white, grey and black. “It shows the diversity of human beings - how there are elements of good and evil in us. My character Bharathi represents the white. She is a Tamil transwoman who was sold to a brothel in Mumbai at a young age. Bharathi is then bought by one of her clients, a rich landlord who takes her to Punjab, where she spends most of her time stringing beads. The character is strong and I loved portraying her,” says Kalki. But it was not always easy.“A few days into the shoot, it became really cold and it took all my effort not to shiver in front of the camera. Worse, we spotted a number of snakes on location and I was in a constant state of fear.”
Kalashnikov is about the misguided youth and terrorism. “The name of the film is inspired by Mikhail Kalashnikov, the person who made AK 47 rifle.” Kalki dubbed for her role at Panjharaksha Media Productions at RS Puram in Coimbatore. “The director was here and I finished it in a day. But, the post-production work took almost two and a half years.”
Kalki recollects the exact moment when Balakrishna called her to tell her of the film being selected for the festival. She was painting at home in Pollachi, she says.“It was quite unexpected. The shooting happened so long back, that I had almost forgotten about the movie!” She saw the film for the first time at the Festival and was happy with her performance. So what is next? “This film will be send to more film festivals and will later hit theatres. I would love to act in more films and direct too. I have actually written a script. It is a comedy travel film, which revolves around the lives of four friends. I hope to do it by 2020.”
