There is nothing that can stop actor Shabana Azmi from working, not even a broken wrist. The actor was back on the set, ready to shoot, just two days after sustaining injuries. The show must go on, she says firmly, and she hopes she can work till her last breath. “That is the way I have always been,” the 72-year-old tells us while opening up about her injury.

She adds, “This is not so bad. There was a time when I twisted my ankle just before a show. My mother (late artiste Shaukat Kaifi) said to me, ‘You can’t cancel a show. The show must go on’. And I have believed in that since then. At that time, I didn’t know it was a fracture. I thought it was a sprain. But I went on stage after taking injections. So, such things keep happening, and you have to just carry on.”

The veteran continues, “Now, I am working with a broken wrist. Within two days after breaking it, I had to come to Budapest to shoot for Steven Spielberg’s Halo. My family was worried and said, ‘How can you travel? What can you do?’ But I wanted to do it. Now, I am managing to work with this. It’s putting some challenges on the crew, and it’s putting some challenges on me. But over the years, I have realised that I am happiest when I’m working. I would like to die with my shoes on.”

In fact, even during the pandemic, Azmi chose work over everything else and decided to go to London to shoot Shekhar Kapur’s international project, What's Love Got to Do with It? “When I was told not to go, it was not coming from a place of ‘You are doing something wrong’, but in a way that it might be a hazardous thing to do. But I trusted my gut,” she ends.