Stardom cuts you off from people: Shabana

LOCARNO: It is one of those mornings on which Switzerland does not look like the sunshine postcards. On the hotel terrace facing Locarno lake, a woman in a grey morning suit sizes up the rainy world outside and gets back to her bowl of cereal and hot milk.This is an unusually relaxed morning for Shabana Azmi. India's most celebrated actor-activist isn't quite used to the enforced leisure."Javed (Javed Akhtar, her lyricist husband) says I live on the edge. 'You'll have neurosis and die,' he tells me. My idea of spending leisure is to bring down all the clothes in the cupboard and rearrange them," chuckles Azmi, who is also a member of Parliament.From being the poster-girl of the '80s new wave cinema in India, she has got busier every day, driven by a compulsive need to stand up and be counted on issues ranging from slums to gender to health to communalism. Critics have called her activism superficial and accused her of political double standards. They have said she juggles too many worlds.Azmi doesn't agree. "These are not separate parts of my personality. The issues are an extension of my core concerns like urban housing, poverty and women's health," she says. "It's like a ladi, or chain. You pick up a part, and the whole chain comes up."Actors cannot initiate social messages in a movie, but as activists they can give an issue tremendous visibility, says Azmi, who works with Nivara Hakk, an organisation that fights for slum dwellers' rights. Poems like Makaan and Aurat by her father Kaifi Azmi still form the bedrock of her political consciousness, she says.It isn't easy, though. Among other things, Azmi admits that time is a big problem. "I find more and more on my plate every day. What I haven't been able to do so far is say 'no'. Sometimes in a forum, I ask myself: What am I doing here? Finally, my family ends up making the maximum adjustments."She says the many worlds that she inhabits can get disconcerting. "Some of the practical problems I face may seem ridiculous to most. For instance, I needed to drive to this Pierre Cardin party soon after visiting the Borivali slums in the afternoon. I agonised about selecting a dress to suit both occasions," she says.But activism has helped her acting. She explains, "Stardom often cuts you off from your resources - the people and realities around you."As the conversation travels to Gujarat and communalism, the spoon stops moving around in the cereal bowl. Azmi straightens up. "In India, a concerted effort is being made to compress identities in terms of religion. Playing the communal card had started much before the BJP's rise to power. But now it is blatant," she says. "Every time the government wanted to discuss a Muslim issue, they would invite a person with fundamentalist views, the perception being that liberal Muslims are not heard by the masses. This despite candidates backed by the Shahi Imam losing their deposits in elections." She says she has had a stream of supportive letters from Muslims after her recent TV spat with the Imam.Azmi is working on Vishal Bharadwaj's children's film Makdee, in which she plays a witch. She also plays the mother-in-law of the progressive 17th century ruler Ahilyabai Holkar in a new film titled Devibai Ahilya. Her stage commitments continue, with Tumhari Amrita entering its tenth year.Indian cinema, she feels, is at a very bright bend. "Film-makers have finally realised that there is no more a pan-Indian audience. Young people like Farhan Akhtar are making niche, urban films and are unapologetic about it."Finally, the much-loved, much-hated Shabana underlines how fiercely she is her own person. She quotes what a prostitute told her once: "You can put a lid on the mouth of a river, but not on people's mouths."