Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 20, 2018)

What can I say about an actress par excellence, a fiery activist, a Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan awardee with five National Awards, that hasn’t been said or heard before? So, I turned to Vinay Shukla, writer-director of Godmother, to introduce us to the Shabana Azmi he’s known for 45 years.

The actress who brought in her 68th birthday on Tuesday, was his junior at FTII and they met on the set of Parinay, a film she’d signed even before Ankur. It was directed by Kantilal Rathod who’d earlier bagged the National Award for Best Feature Film in Gujarati for his 1969 social drama Kanku. Parinay, too, got the Rajat Kamal Special Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration, with Shabana and Romesh Sharma in the lead. Shukla recalls that they were filming at the IIM campus in Ahmedabad and when he went to call Shabana for a shot, he discovered that she’d gone for a spin in the car she was to drive. “Perhaps she wanted to get a hang of the car, and was back with it in 10 minutes but being a hot-headed, young assistant, I shouted at her and she hollered right back. It was on this tempestuous note that our friendship began,” he chuckles.

The veteran filmmaker admits that back then, he didn’t think actresses contributed much to the storytelling till he watched Shabana and Romesh play out a dramatic scene. “Without her histrionics, my words would’ve remained just words,” says Shukla who, because of his command over Hindi and flair for writing, was often asked to rewrite scenes and lines. “Thanks to Shabana and Romesh, I got credit for the screenplay and additional dialogue.”

The bond strengthened over the years and one day, Shabana complained that he’d never written a script for her and Shukla shared an idea. “The title itself excited her and she urged me to write the script,” he narrates, adding that he was inspired by a woman, Jina Masi, whose husband sold liquor illegally during Prohibition and worked as a liaison between Haji Mastan and Karim Lala who ruled the underworld. “She’d turn up at the Gamdevi police station and abuse the cops if her courier boys were apprehended. I’d wonder what would happen if she entered politics when I learnt of a woman politician in Gujarat and decided to merge the two to come up with my Godmother who ruled in Gujarat,” he flashbacks.

Shabana loved the script and began working on her Godmother, borrowing the way he gestured with his left hand during a narration. “She asked me if I wanted her to play the character in an understated way like Naseeruddin Shah in Manthan or like Dilip Kumar in Ganga Jumna. For me Ganga Jumna is one of the best performances I’ve seen, a judicious mix of a real and larger-than-life character. I told I’d prefer Dilip Kumar and she projected herself more dramatically,” he says.

Godmother bagged six National Awards — Best Actress (Shabana), Best Music Direction (Vishal Bhardwaj), Best Lyrics (Javed Akhtar), Male Playback Singer (Sanjeev Abhyankar), Best Editing (Renu Saluja) and Best Feature Film in Hindi. “Aapne to chhakka maar diya,” Vishal told Shukla who’s often been asked to come up with a prequel or sequel to the film, but for him that’s a closed chapter. “I’ve scripted a whodunnit, that I hope to make with Shabana now,” he says.