When Vidya Balan visited Kamal Haasan

The actor, who has had many such hits in the past, stresses that change is happening with respect to how women are portrayed on the big screen.

Vidya Balan

When Vidya Balan sashays in to a press conference in Chennai, you know she feels at home. She’s a big fan of Kancheevaram sarees, speaks Tamil in a cute Palakkad accent and is… a big fan of Kamal Haasan.

“I’m visiting Chennai after a very long time,” she announced, “Of course, I passed through when I went to Pondicherry and Tirupati recently, but it’s been two years at least since I visited the city. You aren’t inviting me often, I suppose!”

But JFW did. In town for their Women’s Summit, the actress — popular for spearheading titular women roles in Bollywood in recent times — said, “As I drove from the airport, I grew nostalgic. My

atthai use to live here, and I have pleasant memories of visiting her during summer vacations as a child.”

It was on one of those visits that the actress actually visited Kamal Haasan’s house. “I was a huge fan,” she recalls. “He was staying close to my relative’s house, and I pestered them to take me there. Being a kid back then, I thought it was easy to just walk up to his house and meet him! Of course, he wasn’t at home when we went…but they gave me a photograph signed by him and I was so thrilled to get just that.”

Today, she’s thrilled that a slew of heroine-centric films are hitting screens. Vidya Balan, who has had many such hits in the past, stresses that change is happening with respect to how women are portrayed on the big screen. “I’ve experienced that change in the past five-six years. I’ve received many scripts that are female-centric in recent times. After The Dirty Picture and Kahaani released, it was looked at as an aberration, but slowly, that will become a norm. It will take time, but it will happen,” she says confidently.

The reason, as the actress explains, is that such films are both engaging and entertaining. “We did have female-centric films in the 80s and 90s. But maybe they didn’t do well, which discouraged filmmakers. But now, these films are doing well. They have great storytelling. They aren’t uni-dimensional, where women are being either glorified or vilified… it’s about real people. That’s why the connect is that much more. As more women go out to conquer the world, films will reflect that too.”

About standards of beauty and body-image issues, one of the topics covered in the summit, the Kahaani actress said, “A lot has been written about my structure and comments have been passed about my losing or gaining weight. I really think there’s more to me than my body.”