When Swara Bhasker talked of turning producer and writing a script, a tiny alarm bell went off. Is this girl paying the price for her politics? Articulate as expected and unapologetic as feared, she accepted, “I am unusual for a typical Bollywood actor. I am more political than most and I don’t hide it because I am interested in politics and I am clear which side I am on. I have no pretence at neutrality.'
“My background is such,” she explained. “I am from an academic family, my teachers have been progressive, feminist. I was with IPTA, very progressive.”
But thanks to the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar, three alphabets became a noun — JNU. And Swara couldn’t shake off the tag that accompanied her from Delhi.
“It was 10 years ago but I still remember it,” she rewound. “When I went to meet (filmmaker) Sudhir Mishra, he asked me where I was from. I told him Delhi University, JNU, blah, blah. I was dressed normally in jeans, carrying a jhola (the cotton sling bag that’s word-associated with a Leftist). He told me, I’ll give you one piece of advice. ‘Lose that jhola.’ I learnt to wear heels and dress for the red carpet. But I could never lose that jhola,” she grinned cheekily.
Did that jhola come in the way of work?
“Nobody has told me to my face that we cannot work with you,” she stated. “I am working every day. But I am not doing any big films. I don’t know if that’s because of who I am but I do know that 3/4ths of very big producers have told me, ‘You have the tag of a trouble-maker’. And I’ve been asked, ‘Have you come here to be an actress or for your politics?’”
But she could comprehend the make-your-choice stance.
“After the Kathua campaign (the famous/infamous one) when Amazon dropped one tweet of mine from their paid campaign, there was some talk of boycotting Veere Di Wedding. The producers were naturally worried and I understand that. There’s commerce involved, money involved. And actors are the most easily replaceable part of a film.”
Even her boyfriend, Himanshu Sharma, (she’s as open about him as she is about her politics) spelt it out. “I once asked, ‘Is my politics becoming a problem for my producers?’ He said, ‘Nuisance value toh hai.’ Imagine, my boyfriend saying that.
“But,” she ruminated, “if that’s the collateral I have to pay for who I am, I don’t know if I want to put the effort into changing who I am.”
Did production happen because she wasn’t getting enough substantial work?
It happened because she was so closely involved with the making of Anaarkali of Aarah in which she listened to multi drafts of the script, helped the producers get the best technical team, and got involved with the marketing as in requesting Karan Johar to tweet the first look, “which he very kindly did”, that Swara’s brother wondered why she couldn’t put such hard work into something for herself.
“Then my brother got married and I took care of all the arrangements and I said to myself, ‘If I can pull this off, I can produce films,’” she said with a touch of wit.
Swara has the rights to the story of Krishna Sen, the con woman who dressed as a man, married two or three women and gypped them. “I thought it would challenge the hell out of me if I could pull off a man’s role.” It was the challenge that also made her opt to play Sakshi, the one who got to do the hitherto-never-done-before masturbation scene in Veere Di Wedding, when she was offered the tamer role of Meera.
“In fact, I wanted to do that role because of that one scene,” she furnished. “I told Shashank, the director, ‘Let me ham, let the scene be in a shocker-comic space. Let it not be disgusting.’” It worked.
For the girl with a penchant for a hefty challenge, staying in films and brandishing her politics too, will be the big one.
Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author