I’ve loved Lucknow for its feel, its people and the food: Amyra Dastur

Having shot at three major cities of the state, for 'Issaq' in Varanasi and in Lucknow and Agra for 'Prassthanam', actress Amyra Dastur says she feels she’s perfected the UP wali ladki look. “I’ve had such extensive workshops and training to get the UP diction and look right that even at home in Mumbai, I sometimes switch on to that accent and boli without even realizing it,” says she with a laugh.Playing an NRI in 'Prassthanam', Amyra, who’s been born and brought up in Mumbai, says she’s closer home with her character in the film.
But the 'Kalaakaandi' actress says she’s had a blast while shooting in the city. “I’ve loved Lucknow for its feel, its people and the food. I have really enjoyed this shoot schedule,” says Amyra, when we met her on the last day of the film shoot in the city, sometime back. “I loved the mithai here. Everybody talks about the kebabs and biryani, and that we had enough of every day, buts it’s the sweets that I fell in love with. Ali (Fazal) would get us ghar ka khaana every day so the food part is what I loved most of this schedule. But yahan ki mithai is something that I freaked out on. In fact, I loved that square white barfi — it just melts in your mouth. I’m also taking some of it home with me,” she adds.
Talking about Varanasi, where she shot for her debut Bollywood film 'Issaq', Amyra says, “Varanasi was a cultural shock for me. I am a typical Mumbai girl and to see such narrow lanes and cattle roaming about on the streets was something absolutely unheard for me. But as we shot, I loved the city. It’s very vibrant and there’s something really peaceful in the air there.”
Amyra adds, “As for Agra, I had never seen the Taj Mahal before and I really wanted to. So when I got to know that we’ll be shooting there, I actually freaked out. My first glimpse of it and I was mesmerized and dumbstruck. I didn’t utter a word and just went about gawking at the monument and people on the set were like ‘Amyra ko kya ho gaya hai? How come all of sudden she’s become so quiet?’ It was actually like that for me. The Taj certainly is the most beautiful monument in the world. I’ve travelled quite a bit but I’ve never seen anything so beautiful as the Taj Mahal.”
“I was mermerised by the Taj,” said Amyra, who also wrote a couplet as a tribute to the monument with a pic that she posted on Instagram (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav)
"But yes, as far as working in UP is concerned, it’s been my training ground in acting. UP is where I have honed my acting skills and my language. From the typical Banarasi language to Lucknow's sophisticated one, shooting for films in UP has been a huge learning experience for me,” says the actress.
Not having done too many Bollywood films till recently, Amyra says she now has several interesting films in her kitty, including 'Mental Hai Kya' with Kangana Ranaut and Rajkummar Rao. “Now I’m getting work and continuing to get work, but it’s taken me a long time to get here,” says she with a shrug. “But then I find it funny that I didn’t get to work in Bollywood films for the longest time because nearly every second film has a new face. I know that there are a few actors who are losing out on work because some of these new people aren’t actually new to Bollywood. They’re somebody’s daughter, or son or niece, and that hurts me, I’ll be very honest about that. I have struggled a lot to be here and I’ve been working since I was 16. I signed my first film when I was 18, so those two years of struggle I had to face. Now also, I won’t call it a struggle but yes, I am hungry for work and trying to get there. And in that when you see someone get a film based on their last name, it hurts. It does! But at the end of the day, we just accept it because that’s how it is. I can only work as hard as I can and continue to meet the right people at the right time and hope that I continue to get good work.”
A beautiful girl now, Amyra has often talked openly about being bullied as a kid in school. “I was brutally bullied in school,” she says. “I had short hair and buck teeth and kids would call out to me in the most nasty ways possible,” she adds. “I have a younger brother, who’s a year younger than me and we are thick as thieves. Now he’s gone to London for work but before that we were inseparable. So as a kid I wanted to dress up like Jehangir and we would share clothes, and because he had short hair, I also wanted mine short. I didn’t know what threading, waxing and all that crap was till I was in my teens, till I went to boarding school and started living with girls. The girls there would tell me that girls can’t have hairy arms and stuff and I used to wonder why they are telling me all this. But before that I mostly encountered real mean kids. Yes, kids can be mean. I’ve experienced it hands on. You won’t believe it, but I don’t have a single friend from my school days because I was actually the kid whom everybody picked on. And that made me a very angry kid because it’s not something that you can tell your parents about. Because the parents would complain to the teachers and the teacher would yell at those kids and then, oh man, you’ve had it when the kids come to know that you’ve ratted on them. You’d be lynched. I remember a lot of them would get physical, so there was a lot of physical brutality involved in my bullying,” says Amyra with an evident shudder, adding, “It’s not as if the teachers didn’t know about it but some would turn a blind eye because these kids would irritate the teachers also. So I was bullied till I turned 15-16, till when I really started transforming into this pretty girl. So I’ve kind of seen it both sides. I’ve seen it not being pretty and I’ve seen it being pretty. And it’s sad but perhaps in school they only care about your looks. The day I turned into a pretty girl, the attention shifted to ‘oh you’re so pretty’! Why don’t you come to this party, why don’t you come out with us!’ And although the situations did change, but my personality didn’t change. I was still this introverted kid who would keep away from the other popular kids. But when I shifted to this other school, that’s where I really made some good friends. Friends that I have now are all of that school. I’ve known them for nearly 8-9 years and they’re all really close to my heart. I left the previous school because I was being bullied so badly there.”
Amyra Dastur (BCCL/ Aditya Yadav)
But the girl says she got over it and successfully too, which led her to her love for movies.
“I coped up with the situation in the sense that I would take out my anger on my parents and I immersed myself in my studies. So for me it was all about doing well in school. But what in fact, actually helped me, was movies. I would come back from school crying and bruised after all the shoving and pushing in the bus, have my food and watch movies to forget all of that. I think that’s what really attracted me to movies because it would give me so much of solace. They just made me feel good. And my mother would also let me watch these films because they would like calm me down. So that’s where my love for movies came from,” says Amyra with a smile.
Amyral has learnt her lesson well, as she also takes trolls on social media in her stride. “If someone says anything mean to me I just kind of brush it off. Because I feel I’ve been through all of that and I won’t let it affect me now. It’s the same with trolls. I ignore most but then there are some remarks that I see on Richa’s (Chadha) and Swara’s (Bhaskar) tweets, which I think are really disgusting. Especially when you’re targeted as a woman. See god has given us women these body parts and we can’t really do anything about them. It’s not as if we’ve put them there and if one starts commenting about them they deserve the answers they get from both these girls. I mean it’s commendable how both of them handle their trolls. Most of it I would ignore but when it comes to the women aspect, when a woman is commented upon just because she’s blessed with certain assets, it’s nasty. It’s like you put up a picture and someone will comment… ‘oh nice b***s!’ That’s so ridiculous. Why? This is the question to ask that – why? What gives you the right to say this to a woman,” she avers.
— Itishree.Misra@timesgroup.com