Nayandeep Rakshit (DNA; August 2, 2017)

It’s fun to meet Kajol. She’s a riot. “You just love me because I talk too much,” she laughs, as we begin our chat. Kajol will soon be seen in a Tamil film VIP 2 (dubbed in Hindi) with Dhanush. Here she opens up about why she didn’t want to take up the role and what changed her mind, about choosing a rather grey character and returning to Tamil cinema almost after two decades. Kajol gets candid and I am all ears...

Your’re returning to the South film industry after 19 years. Why the long gap?
I haven’t done a film in another language for a very long time, for the simple fact because I think I wouldn’t have done justice to it. Secondly, it’s too much work and I don’t want to do so much work. (Laughs). When I shot for Sapnay, I would sit with these papers and papers of dialogues written in Tamil every night. It was like homework. I don’t think I have studied so much in my life. Not even for my 10th standard exams! (Smiles). It was a hell lot of work and I didn’t want to do that again. I wanted to do films where I did not have to learn the language but just act, where I could spread my wings that way. That’s exactly what I did.

Then why VIP 2?
When they came to me, I told them clearly that I’m not interested. They asked me to just hear the script. I said, ‘Come and narrate the script but I still won’t do the film’. But when they narrated the script, I really liked it. I told them I liked it but... it was in Tamil! They told me that half of the dialogues are in English and the other half, it wouldn’t matter if you even speak Chinese! They said they will make an effort to work with me, so that everything works out. I was okay because if they were willing to take that much effort...That’s exactly how we started and they fully lied to me! (Laughs)

Lied how?
The first day they gave me these three pages of full Tamil dialogues. I was like, “Where’s the English?” (Laughs) The only English in the whole page was possibly just my name. I told them it’s time for them to call another actress. They also joked that it will take them time to organize someone to replace me so they asked me to make an attempt. That’s exactly what we did. It took me a day or two. Dhanush and Soundarya were wonderful, they worked around it with different kinds of methods, voice notes, papers and Roman English and regular Hindi to see what works best. First two days, I don’t think I slept also. I used to be stressed about whether I would be able to say all the Tamil lines. I was learning these dialogues in the car, going to work, coming back from work, sitting up, hearing the voice notes to see what the dialogue is supposed to sound like. And it paid off because by the third day, I had figured a rhythm to the language. Then on the last day of the shoot, they handed me one huge paper and told me, “Ma’am, this is your dialogue.” I was aghast. They said ‘unfortunately, we can’t cut this in between.’ I told them that they waited for the last day to do that to me so that I couldn’t even walk out of this film, even if I wanted to. (Laughs) After much emotional and professional blackmail, I decided to try my hands at it. It took us just four retakes and we were done. I was very very proud of this and I thought to myself, “If I can do this, I can do anything.”

There’s a huge change in people’s perception towards regional cinema today...
I think the kind of movies we are making is also changing. The digital boom has changed things overall for everybody. It has changed the perspective where cinema is concerned — how we see cinema and make cinema as well. The people we are making the films for, has also changed. Today, they are making films which appeal to a wider audience. That in itself has changed the whole ballgame. One of the finest examples of universal cinema would be Baahubali. It’s got to do with the world we are living in today. There’s a five year old who knows 20 times more than what I knew when I was 20! What I figured out at 22-23! My kids are like, “Mom, you don’t know this, I will tell you how to do it.”