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 Shabana
Azmi has done her first kiss in Reema Kagti's "Honeymoon Travels Pvt.
Ltd" and says her children - Farhan and Zoya Akhtar - are planning to
exploit the scene fully.
"You
know my kids have put the kiss in the trailer. Zoya and Farhan say
they're going to exploit me commercially. Thank you so much," Shabana
told IANS.
Shabana's boisterous laughter controls your thoughts,
"What's a kiss with Boman? I've kissed Nandita Das in 'Fire'. Watching
me do a normal kiss, you'll heave a sigh of relief.
"It's a very
innocent sweet, and non-controversial kiss... I had a ball doing
'Honeymoon Travels...' My children are involved with it. I've a very
small part."
About her unusual pairing with Boman Irani, Shabana
says, "Boman plays this Christian Goan guy. I play this Muslim woman.
He plays a brash man. My character is more genteel."
Shabana says she likes her look in the movie.
"I
love my look in this film. I keep telling the clothes designer Arjun
Bhasin that after this film he won't be getting any more assignments.
All of us are so atrociously dressed by design. For Arjun's sake, I
hope the film industry gets the point, or this is the end of his career.
"Jokes
aside, it's a great feeling to dress according to character. But when
my mother saw these clothes she freaked out. 'Please Shabana, it
hurts!' she told me. Arrey, she can dress any way she wants for a part.
Why not me?"
It was a great pleasure for Shabana to play this nondescript character, who emerges as a person in her own right.
"This
Goan guy, who's her husband, wants to make her happy. He keeps reciting
'sher' in wrong Urdu. Such a sweet tender relationship... The kiss
comes in when he reaches his ancestral house to see it being
dismantled. That's when I move towards him. He kisses me right in the
middle of the street.
"Will my audience be shocked? I think not! I think Boman was far more terrified than I was."
Shabana is all praise for her director.
"Because
she has been an efficient assistant director, she has this quality of
getting whatever she wants by hook or by crook. Other first-time
directors are ready to commit suicide if they can't get the shot they
want. Not Kagti. She always had an alternative plan."
Shabana recalls that one shot with Boman which was canned after a long delay.
"There's
always that one shot in every film which remains a problem till the
end. It was a simple scene on a beach featuring Boman and me. The first
time it couldn't be done because I had to go to the US for an award. I
stayed back for the scene. It didn't happen.
"Then I gave up
Holi in my house -- you know how important Holi is to me -- to do that
scene. Again, it didn't happen. When we finally did it, it had to be
re-done."
Doing an ensemble piece was a total pleasure for Shabana.
"I've
done two of them back-to-back. The first one was 'The Lions Of Punjab'
(earlier called 'The Contest') directed by Manish Acharya. The one
thing that an ensemble cast teaches you is endless patience. You are an
extra in every scene. If you get bored of being an extra, you harm the
film.
"Fortunately, Goa, where we shot the film, didn't give any
of us a chance to get bored. We all did such fun... playing antakshari,
dumb charades..."
Shabana describes her co-star Boman as an endlessly curious man.
"He's
such a movie buff. He knows every detail of every film. I'd just sit
back and wonder what sort of a Parsi is this who knows everything about
Hindi films. He speaks non-stop. He'd pretend all the time that I was
scolding him. But Boman and I had a ball.
"All the young girls in the unit wanted to be around Boman, and the boys hovered around me. So we were both deeply flattered."
Shabana loved the entire cast.
"Particularly
Sandhya Mridul who has the most delicious sense of humour. I just
adored being around her. And then Raima Sen ... she is one of her own
kind. And I'm so proud of my child Zoya. I always wondered how she'd be
as a director.
"Watching her handle the unit of 'Honeymoon
Travels...' as a producer, I could see her capabilities. My god, this
girl is absolutely amazing."
By Subhash K. Jha, Indo-Asian News Service
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