I Never Thought I Would Direct Films, Konkona On Her Next Big Role

In conversation with actress and debutant director Konkona Sensharma.

After making her debut as a child actor in Bengali films, Konkona Sensharma made headlines when she bagged the National Award for Best Actress for her role as Meenakshi Iyer in her mother, Aparna Sen’s Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002).

Having spent decades of her career in front of the camera, Konkona has now taken on a challenging role behind it. A Death In the Gunj, releasing on Friday will be Konkona’s directorial debut. Here’s a chat with the actress and filmmaker:

Q. From Mr and Mrs Iyer to Lipstick Under My Burkha, when you look back at your career as an actress, do you see this evolution of Konkona with each film, associate each film with a certain period of your life?

Konkona Sensharma: I don’t look back as much, to be honest, but yes of course each film is tied up to a particular time­– how old I was or what I must have been going through at that time. Those kind of memories are there.

Some films you make, where some friendships last over decades or some friendships you make, which are very specific to that particular time and place. Some films, you may not have had a great time shooting but they went on to do very well and some films, you had a lovely time shooting but they didn’t do well, so, of course each film has its own experience.

Q. You’ve done a healthy mix of both art house films and mainstream ones but did you prefer one particular style of filmmaking more or were you just happy as long as the story was well told?

Konkona Sensharma: There are many ways to make a good film. It depends, it’s best not to have any preconceived notions. Sometimes it has happened that I don’t have a script and I’ve been like ‘oh dear they’re disorganised’ and it has turned out to be a beautiful film because it has captured some amazing moments or its become something else finally at the end of the day.

Q. There was a time where I felt you got typecast as this out-of-town girl who comes to Mumbai and discovers this big bad city, which gives you another perspective on life. Films like Page 3 or Life in a Metro, even Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Wake Up Sid. Did you at any point feel typecast?

Konkona Sensharma: I’ve done several other films where I’m not like that, but I think because Wake Up Sid was so popular, many people just see this and remember this. I don’t remember exactly but what happens is that two or three films which are very good have the most recall value but there are many other films which are not.

What I did use to get is a lot of morally upright earnest women roles as opposed to slightly more grey characters or someone whose morality is not questioned. Yeah, so I guess people used to come to me for these morally upright woman kind of roles, but I’ve enjoyed playing roles like Ek Thi Daayan which are a little more grey.

Q. Did you find yourself out of place when you came to Bollywood? You had the intellectual bookworm vibe, someone who had an opinion on politics, popular culture, while the industry was largely populated by actors who mostly look inwards.

Konkona Sensharma: You meet so many different kinds of people, that’s the best thing about acting in films. Each project will come to an end, no matter how good or how bad the experience. It will come to an end, you will move on to another project and you will meet new people. You meet so many different kinds of people so some of them you get along with, some of them you don’t. I have sometimes found people who I work well with and sometimes one has found a great friendship and sometimes we’ve had a great time shooting and then moved on as well.

There are many times, even now, where I feel like an outsider, whether it is the Hindi film industry or the Bengali film industry, even though I’ve not really lived and worked there, but I’ve done quite a few Bengali films. I do feel like an outsider and I like that position. I enjoy being in the position of an outsider because I feel more comfortable like that, I feel like I can hide away.

Q. Coming to A Death In the Gunj, was getting into direction a natural move? Was it something you had in mind for a long time or was it reading the short story that inspired you to tell the story yourself?

Konkona Sensharma: I actually didn’t ever want to be an actor. In my early films, I used to be very unhappy in the profession. Of course, that changed, I became more and more comfortable with my own relationship with acting and I eventually grew to love it, but even with direction, I never ever thought that I would direct a film but it happened very naturally, very organically.

My parents used to have a home in McCluskieganj back in the day in the late 70s and early 80s. My grandparents used to live there, so my parents and family friends would travel there a lot and I was very young, just about born. I was too young, so I didn’t really get to enjoy it but I have heard many stories from that time. Funny stories, anecdotes, stuff like that. But because McCluskieganj is also a very remote, isolated wild kind of area with a lot of jungles, it also lends itself a certain atmosphere and certain stories which are a little more spooky in nature, a little more chilling. So somehow those stories became more and more bigger in my head and I started developing a world around those stories and it came to such a point where I realised that - oh my god this can be a movie and so I’ll have to write it and direct it.

Q. Unlike an actor, a director has to wear so many hats, it’s a much more demanding role. Did you think that you had what it takes?

Konkona Sensharma: It’s not like I felt like I know everything about it and that I could do it all, I didn’t, there were some apprehensions. Of course I was very very familiar with the world, having myself done 40-45 films, I’ve made a short film before, I’ve worked with my mother since I was a child, I’ve been on her sets. So I was very comfortable and familiar with the world and with all the different processes. My mother used to make her films from the house, she didn’t have an office so a lot of the work happened there.

I used to play make believe that I’m also making a film and I’m making budgets and writing scripts. My make believe dreams were that I’m 7-years-old and I’m directing my mother who is the actress, saying lights, camera action and all. So I was very comfortable with the world even though that was at another level. But I also have very good people guiding and helping me. I collaborated with so many fantastic and talented individuals like my cinematographer Sirsha Ray from Kolkata who has done a phenomenal job in this film. We talked a lot together, watched films together, we sat and discussed many things together. I told him how I wanted to see things, he gave me suggestions, he used to make drawings. I have very good people who were there to support me and I knew that so that itself helped a lot.

Q. How did Honey Trehan and Abhishek Chaubey come on board as debutant producers on your film?

Konkona Sensharma: I’ve actually known Honey and Abhishek since Omkara days, because they were part of Vishal’s team, so I’ve known them now for 10-15 years.

Honey had actually been calling me to offer me an acting role in another film that he was involved in and I half jokingly said why don’t you produce my film because I was kind of looking for producers at that time. He said sure, I sent him the script and he really liked it and he called back and said done, we’re doing it.

And he and Abhishek were anyway thinking of making this company, MacGuffin, and this happened to then be their first film as well as a company.

I felt I was in very good hands and they got IDrream Studios on board and they funded it and so it all kind of fell into place and Honey was really the person behind all of this.

Q. Which are the directors who influenced you as a director, the way in which you handle your actors or your approach to story telling or the use of technique in your film?

Konkona Sensharma: Definitely I would say my mother, Satyajit Ray and also Truffaut and Bergman. These were the directors whom I loved and watched a lot, especially in my growing up years. Then, of course, as I became older and in college and beyond I learnt about so many other directors and watched so many other different kinds of films.

Because my mother encouraged us to always watch films from all over, we also watched a lot of Kurosawa, Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, when we were kids. Growing up in the 80s, these films were so popular and classics like Roman Holiday, we watched a lot of films. I think she didn’t let me watch a lot of mainstream Bollywood films from the 80s.

How you see films or the language of films, how you think films can be, images you watch, that influences you.

Q. The cast of A Death in the Gunj boasts of some brilliant actors. You’ve got Kalki, Ranvir, Tillotama and Om Puri among others. How did you go about the process of casting for the film? You’ve been an actor yourself and you know all these people quite well so did you already have some names in your mind or did you audition for the characters?

Konkona Sensharma: Well I had some names in mind, I’d always wanted Vikrant, Ranvir, Tillotama. I hadn’t seen any of Jim Sarbh’s work before, I hadn’t seen Gulshan’s work. I love Kalki’s work but I wanted an older women and obviously I didn’t feel she looked sufficiently old for me, she’s very young. Tanuja, for example, I never knew that she was still acting and that she’d be so amazing in the role. So I had two, three people in mind and then I think Honey really helped me to find amazing characters.

Q. You must share a very comfortable relationship with Ranvir Shorey if you chose him to play Vikram?

Konkona Sensharma: I find him to be one of the best actors in the country, I think he’s highly underrated. He’s a wonderful person, I do not want to get into the personal aspect of it.

Q. Were you ever tempted to cast your mom, Aparna Sen, since it’s your first film?

Konkona Sensharma: (Laughs) You know she does play a character, her voice is in the film. She plays one of the character’s mother whom we only hear, we never see but if she was younger she could have played Tillotama’s role. For Tanjua’s role, I wanted that look for the character that Tanuja gives. I wanted to break the stereotype of the typical mother look and the typical grandmother look and that’s why Tillotama is not a typical mother figure and Tanuja is not a typical grandmother figure.

Q. But did you often turn to your mother for advice?

Konkona Sensharma: Yes! Very often. I actually spoke to her every few days. I would make a list of questions and every few days I would talk to her about it, especially since it’s 1979 and one does not have a lot of information available for that time, so I had to rely a lot on my mother or my father’s memories of that time, and my sister. And memory itself is so imperfect. What we remember, what we don’t, how we remember.

My mum would say, ‘oh yes this used to happen like this’ and my dad would say ‘oh really? I don’t remember’ and my sister would say, ‘no no it used to happen like that’ so that was really fun.

Q. The film has been screened at Toronto, Busan, MAMI, I want to know what is the most memorable feedback or compliment you received.

Konkona Sensharma: Cameron Bailey, the director of the Toronto Film Festival, said he loved my film and he kept comparing it to Chekhov, he said it’s very Chekhovian at which I laughed, I was like really? Wow!

Q. Did you face any trouble with the CBFC?

Konkona Sensharma: A little bit, in the sense that they gave it an ‘A’ certificate which is okay but they still wanted some cut which I didn’t understand. I mean if it’s an ‘A’ certificate then why do you want anything to be cut? It was a minor cut and I wasn’t okay with it but we just decided to choose our battles because we needed the certificate within a certain time in order to release it, so we were like it’s okay let’s just go ahead with this.

But I don’t understand the logic, I mean if you’re giving an ‘A’ certificate then who are you protecting and from what. These are adults who are voting for their own government, who are choosing the people they want to marry, what are you not letting them see and why? Why can’t they choose what they want to see?

Q. I would like your reaction to the reason the CBFC cited at first for refusing the certification of Lipstick Under My Burkha which you star in. The reason as per the letter was:

“The story is lady oriented, their fantasy above life. There are contanious sexual scenes, abusive words, audio pornography and a bit sensitive touch about one particular section of society...”

How do you react to this?

Konkona Sensharma: To begin with, I don’t want to react to the English. The English is not very good but that’s not the problem, they could’ve written it in Hindi. But the thinking I feel is backwards.

We are constantly being shown things where women are depicted through a male gaze and we’re constantly shown that and that’s okay but we’re not allowed to show women who are dealing with their own desires and ambitions and how they view it and I think that’s wrong.

If you want, you can give it an ‘A’ certificate and just let it be and let people watch. You can’t force people to watch or not watch something. I don’t think it makes sense, I am not in support of it at all.