My roles do not provide an instruction manual for women: Shefali Shah

Being one of the few actresses in Hindi cinema to command an oeuvre comprising powerful characters like DCP Vartika Chaturvedi (Delhi Crime) or Shamshu (Darlings), Shefali Shah has often been labelled the torchbearer of women empowerment on screen. However, the actress doesn’t believe she can provide an instruction manual. “Every woman has different parameters. I’m no one to judge or provide an instruction booklet to people. When I chose to take a sabbatical to nurture my children, it felt empowering to know that my kids were dependent on me,” Shefali explains.
The Dil Dhadakne Do actress – who was in the city over the weekend for a talk – tells us how she loves being real on social media, exploring regional stories for films, and more.

‘Regional literature is yet unexplored in our country’
Shefali recently documented her solo trip to Manali on social media, where she expressed her love for exploring local culture and lands. Ask her if she’d want to bring any of these stories alive on the big screen, and the actress – who has also found a penchant for writing – says, “I would love to do things in regional languages. There is such rich culture when it comes to Marathi or Gujarati literature, and even Bengali. No one’s exploring these or using them to interpret stories on screen. I think I’ll go through all the literature possible and decide what I want to go ahead with.”

Coming to Gujarati, Shefali, whose mother is a Gujarati – and she is married to a Gujarati (filmmaker Vipul Amrutlal Shah) – shares that she isn’t well-versed in the language. “I must admit that I am not synced much with Gujarati literature. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a fact as it has never been my first language, despite my mother being a Gujarati. But there is so much beautiful stuff that is yet to be explored. I think I would like to be part of a remake of Santu Rangili (the 1976 Gujarati film starring Aruna Irani and Arvind Trivedi).”

‘I only know how to be authentic’
While it is tough to gauge the difference between what’s real and reel on social media, Shefali says that she cannot be anything else but authentic and real. “A lot of times, it (her content) may seem inappropriate, so I’m advised to take something off, but it’s a conscious decision to be myself because I really can’t be anyone else. There’s no point in posting perfectly manicured pictures all the time. There’s nothing real about it.”