In her introduction scene in Dil Dhadakne Do , Neelam Mehra looks into the mirror and tries to put on her pout. With an ordinary actor it would have missed our attention but with Shefali Shah it opens a Pandora box of possibilities. Perhaps it is a practice that she attempts everyday. Why her gloomy eyes are not in sync with vanity show that she is putting on…. And during the course of the film, as Shefali takes off one layer after another, she reinvents the stereotypical suffering mother for a generation born after Leela Chitnis, Durga Khote and Nirupa Roy, et al. “By the way this was my last scene in the film,” informs Shefali, excited by the response that her character has got. “By that time I knew what Neelam Mehra is all about. I picked the pout from Anilji (Kapoor). Every now and then he has this habit of sinking his cheeks and looking into the mirror. And in the film as well he is this self-obsessed husband who doesn’t care to praise his wife when she dresses up for the party. He looks into the mirror, appreciates himself and moves on, leaving the wife feeling ignored. So when she gets her chance she copies him. Psychologists say after a decade of marriage people start behaving like their spouses.”
Playing a glorious doormat was not easy. “When Zoya offered me the role, she said Neelam is the weakest character on paper but as the days progressed it got deeper and deeper. I always like to do research on the characters I play. To me behind the ice-cold and conniving queen bee that Neelam is there is a slightly lost and vulnerable woman who is grappling with an insecure life and I had to bring those layers on the surface. She fears when her husband will drop her for a pretty young thing and where will she go. So she constantly tries to ignore his philandering ways but doesn’t always succeed. She is one of those women who can’t dare to walk out of marriage. So when her daughter breaks the news that she is considering divorcing her husband, Neelam tries to tell her that she doesn’t know what all her mother has done to save her marriage.”
And that was the difficult part for Shefali. “Neelam is not like me at all. I can’t hold back so much. And I would not like to give the advice that she gives to her daughter in the hamam scene in Turkey to my children. To make it sound authentic from the point of view of Neelam was difficult.”
On our films increasingly finding faults with the institution of marriage, Shefali says some men are brought up as chauvinists. “It is a woman’s choice whether she puts up with such a man or walks out. Either way she should not be judged.”
When you have Shefali, whose eyes can convey multiple thoughts, you don’t need a narrator to explain the motivation of characters. Shefali says it is pointless to question the presence of Pluto Mehra. “Zoya has written the film from Pluto’s point of view and he lends a distinct voice to the film.”
Analysts often say that in an industry which is always eager to pigeonhole you, Shefali committed hara-kiri by playing the spouse of Amitabh Bachchan and the mother of Akshay Kumar in Waqt. She played Bachchan’s wife in The Last Lear as well and though it was much more complex and nuanced than Neelam and won her the coveted National Award, somehow the mother image stuck. “By that reckoning I had committed it much before when as a 20 something I played the mother of a 15 year-old in tele-series Hasratein. If the role is meaty I am game to play even a dog. In fact when I read Pluto’s lines, I asked Zoya can I play this part,” she quips.
She says like the society the industry also sees women only as mother, daughter and sister. “They don’t look at women beyond the relationships as an individual. For long they have been writing films only with heroes and heroines. It is only in the last few years that I am observing a change. Also, I often ask the media people that when mother is pivotal in everybody’s life why they question the actors who choose to play a mother’s part.”
Unlike most actresses, Shefali doesn’t want to hide her age. “I am 40 and don’t want to make a fool of myself by trying to play a doll. But still I can play a variety of roles. People say I am choosy. They may not have seen The Last Lear but now nobody can say that we haven’t seen Dil Dhadakne Do . Let’s see what the industry offers me now.”
