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Brick by brick

At the National School of Drama, Tannishtha Chatterjee was considered a bright student. She “borrowed” much of her brightness from the man she used to closely observe — Naseeruddin Shah, her teacher. “I used to be awestruck by his innovative ideas and variations in acting,” recalls this Delhiite by birth and Bengali by parentage.

No wonder Tannishtha didn’t wait for mainstream Hindi films to come her way after she completed her graduation in the late ’90s. She chose films like Shadows of Time (in German/Bengali) and the Indo-French production Let the Wind Blow to test her acting prowess in the beginning of the year 2000.

Art house filmmaker Sanjay Jha chose her to play the daughter of a priest in his controversial film Strings – Bound by Faith in 2006 opposite Kabir Bedi’s son Adam Bedi. The film did well on the international festival circuits though it bombed commercially. But Tannishtha was noticed by many film directors who were looking for “another Smita Patil in Bollywood” recounts the 28-year-old, adding that she would like to carve out her own niche though.

Her struggle was twofold: With her parents and with the dull offers from the Hindi film world. It took her a while to “persuade” her parents and win them over to the idea of her taking up films as a career choice. “They thought the NSD course was just a hobby. But they came around slowly. Now they say they are proud of me. I feel light now,” she unwinds. The reason is, she chose English films to embark on her film journey and soon made a name internationally.

“I bagged two international films and both are based on bestselling novels, and in both, I played the lead,” she flashes her pearly smile. She is talking about Brick Lane by Monica Ali and Barah Aana based on Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga’s “White Tiger”. She got rave reviews in Brick Lane for playing Nazneen, a 17-year-old Bangladeshi girl married to a rich, pompous middle aged man (Satish Kaushik) who is settled in East London’s Brick Lane area. Tannishtha was nominated for the Best Actress Award in the British Independent Film Awards in the U.K for this role. She walked the red carpet with eminent actors like Judi Dench and Anne Hathaway while attending the award function recently.

“It was a surreal experience. Judi said to me, ‘It’s you who should win the award too’. I didn’t know how to react. My agent warned me, ‘Please behave, and control your emotions…’,” Tannishtha recalls, laughing. The film that was released in the U.K in 2007, is likely to release in India by this year-end, she shares.

She has just finished the shooting of Barah Aana. “I have Nasser Sir and Vijay Raaz as my co-actors in it. The film showcases the difference between the have’s and have-nots and is shot in Dharavi. It’s about those drivers, durbans, peons, etc. who work in five stars or corporate houses. They live two lives: one in their plush work place and another at the slum. I play a girl who owns a public telephone booth in Dharavi. She picks up some English from foreigners who come to make calls there. Here she meets an Italian who breaks her belief that everything in the West is bright.”

And she has a string of meaty roles lined up in films like Urban Summer, The Sunrise and Bhopal: Prayer for Rain. These are all made with foreign collaboration. She shares, “The Sunrise (directed by Partho Sengupta) is almost a silent film. I speak three-four sentences in it. It is about a kidnapping racket which abducts me when I am 12. So, I am stuck in time and don’t grow beyond that, while Urban Summer earlier named Bombay Summer directed by Joseph Matthew is about a young girl who experiences the taste of the metropolitan culture in Mumbai. It is also about the relationships between young people in a big city.”

Surprised at why no Indian filmmaker has yet taken the Bhopal gas tragedy for a film, Tannishtha says she chose to work in Bhopal… (directed by Ravi Kumar) for the same reason. “It’s about a tragedy-struck man (Rajpal Yadav), whose ambitious wife I play. Martin Sheen (American actor) plays the owner of the Union Carbide factory in it. ” The story of the film is written by well known British scriptwriter David Brooks.

Tannishtha can endlessly speak of her international films but she draws a blank when it comes to Hindi cinema. “It doesn’t bother me,” she says nonchalantly. “They say, the road to meaty roles is from the ‘Hindi’ lane, and I think I have proved it wrong. Now they (directors/producers) would come to me with worthy roles,” she concludes, smiling.

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