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Ah! That familiar face

Meet Sulbha Arya, on your telly screen from this Monday as Fatima Bi

Photo: Anu Pushkarna

THE VETERAN Actress Sulbha Arya

Perhaps this is not quite the right way to start a chat with someone who has seen as many as 40 summers in our entertainment industry. In spite of her long presence, no one likes being bracketed as `someone from the generation of yore'. Anyway, you have already committed the mistake of asking her, "You belong to the earlier TV era but have managed to survive even after the cable TV boom where the focus is increasingly on the glamour quotient of a show than anything else. How have you achieved it?"

With that typical smile of hers, veteran actress Sulbha Arya takes special note of the expression, "belonging to the earlier era" with a friendly wink, and then replies, "Sure I belong to the earlier era, but the glamorous world also needs people like us to make things look real." You completely agree with her, but remind her she hasn't replied to the query in full. All you are interested in is in knowing how the transition has been for her, where does a producer think lies her capability in taking forward a soap opera in a competitive market.

Twitching her eyes a bit, she gives her grounds: "With my 21 years of theatre-acting people know about the serious side of my acting talent, but I guess it is the success of serials like Yes Boss and Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi that made people look at me as someone who could fit in a comic role too." And precisely for this reason has she been chosen to play the role of Fatima Bi in Sab TV's brand new serial Twinkle Beauty Parlour starting this Monday evening.

"Fatima's role is again very covertly comic, as is my role of the mother-in-law in Yes Boss. She adds colour to the neighbourhood with her anecdotes and gossip and makes everyone laugh," elaborates the well-known character artiste of Bollywood films. In the 9 p.m. daily, she shares "a special relationship" with Narayani Shastri, her co-actor in the Zee TV serial, Piya Ka Ghar. "Narayani does the role of Ranjana, to whom Fatima gives shelter. Ranjana opens the Twinkle beauty parlour at Fatima's house. She obviously has a special corner for Ranjana," adds Sulbha.

Sulbha's eldest daughter-in-law by the way, is the show's producer, she shares.

Comedy that it is, she obviously gets talking about the genre. "Comedy is the most wanted thing now on our television and yet there are not too many to name," she comments. About Yes Boss, she says, "It is actually a big surprise that the serial has been doing so well even after so many years. Comedy is very difficult to sustain and in this case, it is hanging on a very thin storyline. They don't suddenly leap 20 years hence. They remain the same. Perhaps the reason that it is episodic adds to its success, because people can catch up with it anytime and need not lose track of the storyline if they miss out on a few episodes." So it is also the power of the short and sweet script then. "Yes, if you have a good script, half the battle is won. All you need is a set of good actors to deliver it well on screen," she replies.

Stage is the best

Staggering her work schedule between television serials, films and stage-acting, Sulbha obviously picks stage as her favourite medium. "The earlier generation came to acting on screen mostly from the stage. We all did it and look for an excuse to go back to it. But I guess now even the untrained people who have come in to acting in TV serials are gradually waking up to the thrill of doing theatre. Most of them now want to do at least one play a year for creative satisfaction," she points out. Well then, `the earlier generation' is still showing the way!

SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY

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