Actor Supriya Pathak has been on repose for the last couple of days. Her daughter, actor Sanah Kapur, married actor Mayank Pahwa in an intimate ceremony in Mahabaleshwar last week. And while it was a “small event”, Supriya and her husband, actor Pankaj Kapur “were geared up to make it memorable for the guests”. “I don’t think it has sunk in yet,” says Supriya, as she talks about her daughter’s marriage.

The photos from the wedding have been doing the rounds on social media and one featuring Surpiya, Pankaj, and actor-couple Ratna Pathak Shah (Supriya’s sister) and Naseeruddin Shah caught everyone’s attention. In fact, a Twitter user commented, ‘Somebody cast them together in a film please.’ Mention this to her and Supriya quips, “Somebody listen to them (laughs). If someone wants to make a film, we have all the actors in the family. Even my younger son is making his debut.”

Ask her what it’s like when all the veterans are under one roof and she says, “Pagalpan. It’s crazy. We don’t talk about work, as we have a lot to talk about.”

Talking about how the wedding ceremony of her daughter unfolded, she shares, “Sanah looked like a fairy. When she walked down [the aisle] with her father, they played a beautiful song (the Punjabi folk track, Madhaniya). It was an emotional moment. I cried for quite a bit. But then, I was elated when they spoke the vows.”

On a parting note, the Khichdi actor calls actors Manoj and Seema Pahwa (the groom’s parents) “family” and adds, “We have known each other for centuries. Mayank is like my son.”

The wedding season is in full swing in Bollywood. Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak’s daughter Sanah tied the knot yesterday with Manoj and Seema Pahwa’s son Mayank. The couple got married surrounded by their family and friends in Mahabaleshwar. The pre-wedding festivities like mehendi and sangeet took place on Tuesday night.

Sanah, who is Shahid Kapoor’s sister, had shared screen space with the actor in the film Shaandaar. Sanah’s cousin, Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah’s son, Vivaan shared some videos on social media in which the family could be seen welcoming the couple to the beats of dhol. Later, they danced to a medley of Bollywood songs.

When we reached out to Pankaj Kapur, he confirmed the news. Though he was busy with the celebrations and wanted to stay tight-lipped about the shaadi, he said, “I don’t want to talk much about this, but yes, it is my daughter’s wedding and that’s about it.”

The Kapurs and Pahwas have been family friends for many years and Sanah and Mayank have known each other for a long time.

Fatima to tickle the funny bone Comedy is no cakewalk, realises the Dangal actor as she preps for her next
Uma Ramasubramanian (MID-DAY; March 29, 2020)

Moving on from the success of Dangal, Fatima Sana Shaikh is entering unknown territory with Abhishek Sharma’s Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari. While currently in self-isolation, the actor reveals how she improved her comic timing on set.

Assuming that the genre would be fairly easy, Shaikh claims that it was a rude wake-up call on set when she met her expert co-stars. “Before the shoot, I had no inkling how spontaneous and natural one has to be to get the comic timing right. While reading the script, the line may not appear to have punches, but with the right reaction, the scene becomes funnier. I learned by watching Diljit [Dosanjh], Supriya [Pathak] and Annu Kapoor, who are champions in this genre.”

Shaikh gathered that comedy is “no cakewalk” when she realised that she was on a “different wavelength” compared to her co-stars. “My sense of spontaneity and humour was on a different wavelength when compared to others. I learned how important it was to be in the moment and to let go. I thought comedy is simple and actors practising the genre don’t need to worry, but I was mistaken,” she said.

Essaying a Maharashtrian character in the film, Shaikh hired a coach to get the diction right. She says, “We hired a coach to ensure I got all the pronunciations right to bring the character alive. Frankly, since I am from Mumbai, it was not as difficult [as I imagined].”

As Alia Bhatt is required to pick Kathiawadi for Gangubai film, SLB approaches Gujarati theatre actors to help him find a tutor
Upala KBR (MID-DAY; November 6, 2019)

Sanjay Leela Bhansali's perfectionist streak is legendary in Bollywood circles. And it is that time again when the auteur will stop at nothing to make sure his next turns out exactly as he has envisioned. Only weeks away from taking his ambitious film, Gangubai Kathiawadi, on floors, Bhansali is on the lookout for a tutor for Alia Bhatt. The actor, in her first collaboration with the filmmaker, will play Gangubai Kothewali — the fierce madam of Kamathipura brothels in 1960s who had gangsters as clients, and was rumoured to be a drug peddler. To stay true to her muse — who hailed from a middle-class Kathiawadi family and was eventually sold off to a Bombay brothel — Bhatt will be required to pick up Kathiawadi.

A trade source reveals that while both, Bhansali and Bhatt, are Gujaratis, Kathiawadi differs largely from the colloquial language. "Interestingly, Alia's paternal grandfather Nanabhai Bhatt was a Gujarati Brahmin who hailed from Kathiawad. But Alia is not familiar with the dialect as it is rarely used outside of the pocket in Gujarat. Since the filmmaker is meticulous in his prep, he wants a tutor who is fluent in the dialect. Bhansali has reached out to some of Mumbai's famous Gujarati theatre personalities, including actors Manoj Joshi and Supriya Pathak, to help him in his search. The film will be shot simultaneously as she undertakes the month-long diction class."

Even though Bhatt will speak the dialect only in portions of the film, Bhansali wants his leading lady to perfect the twang. "The dialect has a strong Sindh influence as the region was inhabited by the Kathis and Rajputs from present-day Rajasthan and Sindh."

Despite repeated attempts, Bhansali remained unavailable for comment

Women over 40 have always had a tough time getting anything but a mother role but a youth-obsessed entertainment industry may be slowly waking up to their talent
Sonam Joshi (THE TIMES OF INDIA; November 3, 2019)

In 2017, frustrated by the lack of good roles on offer for someone her age, actor Neena Gupta shared her wish for “good parts to play” on Instagram. Two years hence, the 60-year-old has landed several meaty jobs, including Masaba Masaba, a TV series based on her and her daughter’s life, a sequel of Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and a thriller called Gwalior. She’s also working on a mysterious new project, where “I will give myself the role I want to play.”

That’s a rare luxury for older women actors in India who fear being thrown into the rocking chair — or worse, the scrapheap — while their male contemporaries continue to romance actresses half their age. And while it may be too soon to say that India’s film and TV industry is embracing the forty-plus female actor, the seasoned silver brigade seems to be getting more opportunities to play more vibrant characters.

If the world re-discovered Gupta through her character of a pregnant middle-aged woman in Badhaai Ho, Shefali Shah made a comeback with Delhi Crime, based on the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case.

Shah, 46, who played older characters quite early in her career, admits she was typecast into the role of the mother. “The kind of work I was being offered was not anything apart from a mother or a grandmother — like a rocking chair in the house that you dump your clothes on. I worked hard to break that image but had to wait a lot. Delhi Crime has broken that for me.”

Shah, who was applauded for her performance as a frustrated homemaker in the YouTube film Juice, and as a widowed restaurateur finding romance in Once Again, says that OTT platforms are leading the change. “Yes, there is definitely ageism. (Male) Actors can play the lead forever and forever but there are very few lead roles for women in this age group,” she says.

This toxic combination of sexism and ageism isn’t just restricted to Bollywood or Hollywood. Anna M M Vetticad, author, The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, says India’s three biggest film industries — Tollywood, Bollywood and Kollywood — are united by their misogyny. “Films like Jackpot (Tamil) and Mahanati (Tamil and Telugu), where plots revolve around women, are uncommon,” she adds. According to her, the ageism directed at older women is exemplified by the casting of Rajinikanth’s female romantic leads who range in age from being old enough to be his daughters and young enough to be his granddaughters. “Women of Rajinikanth’s age are not deemed worthy of being romanced on screen by Rajinikanth,” she says.

Neena Gupta agrees that it will still take more time to break the mould. In fact, she recently pointed out that the roles of two sharpshooting grandmothers in the film Saand Ki Aankh, which were played by Taapsee Pannu and Bhumi Pednekar who are both in their early 30s, could have gone to actors her age. “I don’t mean that the actors who did the film are bad, but that there are fewer roles for older women and I wish it wasn’t so,” Gupta says.

Going deeper into the reason for this reluctance to cast older women, Gupta says finally it boils down to what makes commercial sense, and the role of an older woman in our society. “She still doesn’t have any value. She is only required for domestic chores.”

Seema Pahwa, who had found fame in the 1980s TV show Hum Log, points out that though she is still playing mother, the character is more layered and nuanced. “The industry doesn’t write many roles for women above 50, so our fight is to find a way to make the existing ones better. But thank god we have reached the stage where the mother’s role is considered important and is more than a passing shot,” says Pahwa, 56.

She recently turned director, with her debut film Ramprasad Ki Tehrvi inspired by her real-life experiences. The film has an ensemble cast but one of its central characters, the widow of Ramprasad, is essayed by Supriya Pathak, 57. “She is the protagonist and it is about her awakening,” says Pathak.

Two new films shine a light on the emotional lives of older women as well. Director Tanuja Chandra, whose recent documentary film Aunty Radha, Aunty Sudha, focuses on her two eighty-plus aunts who live together in an Uttar Pradesh village, says older women deserve to have many more stories told about them. “For me, it was crucial to have a record of the lives, thoughts and emotions of my aunts and the people with them. That world may soon be lost to us.”

Debutant director Kislay’s Aise Hee follows an elderly Allahabad resident named Mrs Sharma after she loses her husband at the age of 72 and decides to live life on her own terms, building relationships with the women working in a nearby salon and a tailor who teaches her embroidery. The character is played by veteran TV actor Mohini Sharma, who has acted in TV serials like Shanti and films like Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda. “Usually when old people are shown in films, they are very cutesy or modern or cliched. We didn’t want to fall into these traps,” Kislay says.

The film marks Sharma’s return to the big screen after nearly 25 years — and to her surprise earned a special jury mention for best actor (female) at the MAMI film festival. “I’ve waited many years for a good film and said no to many roles of the hero’s mother and later grandmother,” recalls Sharma, 73. “My question to them would always be to tell me about my character. I don’t want to be the central character but it has to be important — not just standing in the background shedding tears. With this film, I felt satisfied as an artiste.”

Pankaj Kapur turns novelist with a fiction set in Lucknow about an old woman and her buried ambitions
Jane Borges (MID-DAY; October 20, 2019)

Twenty seven years seems like a very long time to live with a story. Veteran actor-director Pankaj Kapur says his debut novel, Dopehri (HarperCollins India), which releases in Hindi and English later this month, has been with him all this time. It has aged like wine, Kapur thinks aloud, when we meet him at his Versova office. It is here that the piece of fiction, which started as an exercise in writing for a film, witnessed many lives. The room has a touch of the old. There is an antique writing desk placed on a wooden table, and dim lamps that lend the space a warm glow. Kapur, 65, points to the seating area outside.

"Before this became my office, it was my home. This is where I first read Dopehri to my dear friend, poet and writer Akshay Upadhyay, in 1992. After listening to it, he insisted that we print it. He took the manuscript from my wife Supriya, and sent it to Bhopal, where it was published in a literary magazine," he remembers. Soon after, Ram Gopal Bajaj, director of the National School of Drama, Kapur's alma mater, visited him, convincing him to read it on stage. That's how Dopehri made its theatre debut in 1996, everywhere but in Mumbai. "For some reason, people were not ready to give me their theatres, because it was a reading. I must confess, I was dejected." It would take him another 20 years, before he could bring the show to his home city. That it opened to packed houses, reaffirmed his faith in the work.

Publishing the novel was Supriya's idea. Kapur calls it "her hard work". Originally written and performed in Hindustani, the 95-page novella has been translated into English by Rahul Soni, and tells the story of Amma Bi, a lonely sixty-five-year-old aristocrat from Lucknow, who is riding into the sunset. Her only son Javed has moved to the US with his family, and she is left at the mercy of her petulant house help, Jumman. When, on the insistence of a family friend, Saxena Saheb, the only person she trusts, Amma Bi gets a paying guest, she experiences an epiphany.

"Before I began writing, I thought I'd set it in a house in Dadar Parsi Colony, where there are big, wooden staircases, and if you sit [in a home], you can hear footsteps of people, going up and down. But strangely enough, the moment I sat down to write, the first word that intuitively emerged from my pen was Amma Bi. When Amma Bi happened, the story got transported to Lucknow, and everything else flowed from there." Writing in Hindustani was effortless for him. "I have no idea where I picked up the texture of the language," says Kapur, who hails from Punjab. "The only reason I can think why it happened is that I schooled at the National School of Drama, where Urdu was an important part of theatre. Probably, while staging plays, I might have developed a sense for it."

Kapur spent a significant part of his childhood listening to his father, A P Kapur, an English professor and a delicious raconteur, who introduced him to everything from Shakespeare to popular folklore. And so, writing came naturally. "But I am not a disciplined writer," he admits. "I write poetry here and there. For me, it needs to be instinctive. I can't force myself." Even Dopehri, he says, happened organically. "I must confess this and emphatically, that Dopehri dawned on me. People will find it strange, but I wrote it in four days. I put pen to paper, and didn't stop."

Though he is as comfortable in English, as he is in Hindustani, Kapur chose not to translate the novel. "It would have been a huge burden. I wrote this 25 years ago. Any attempt to perfect the story, the way I had conceived it in Hindustani then, would have taken at least a year-and-a-half. Also, since it's a story that has been with me all along, I wanted to take a step back and let somebody else look at it from today's perspective, and give it the words that the youth will relate to."

The publishers tried a few translators, before Kapur warmed to Soni's translation. "The first version [of the translation] came from a very famous translator, and it read very well in English. But, it was far away from the original. For me, it was important that the way the characters feel and express, was retained." The two worked on it together, till they were completely satisfied. "It might take an English reader a chapter or two to get used to the language, but once you do, it's intriguing. Soni and the publishers have been sensitive to my work. In my foreword, I have said that Soni has indulged me. In Hindustani, I'd say, 'usne mujhe kaafi bardasht kiya.'"

What Kapur hopes this book will do is leave the reader nostalgic, especially of the elderly, who spend much of their life selflessly. "The pages of this book are filled with emotions: there is humour, pathos, loneliness, warmth and friendship. It's the story of our dadis and mothers, who might have had the ambition to be someone else. Has anyone ever sat down and asked their mothers, Do you want to do something for yourself? I'd like to support it.'"

Pankaj Kapur makes literary debut as his acclaimed play Dopehri is adapted into novel
Shaheen Parkar (MID-DAY; May 6, 2019)

Accompanied by little else than background music and a solitary table on stage, his soulful readings of the adventures of Amma Bi - the protagonist of Dopehri - have left theatre enthusiasts mesmerised. Now, actor-director Pankaj Kapur is set to turn novelist with the play getting a literary adaptation. The veteran recently inked the deal for English and Hindi adaptations with publishing house Harper Collins.

"Dopehri is not drawn from my experiences or based on anyone," says Kapur, who discovered his writing talent in the late '80s. "I have penned poems and written for television as well."

Those glad about Kapur's literary debut have his actor-wife Supriya Pathak to thank. "Supriya was after my life to get the novella published. In fact, she did the groundwork on how one goes about publishing a book, so I have to give her credit for getting the process on track."

Having written the story of Amma Bi - a woman past her prime who lives alone in an old haveli in Lucknow - 20 years ago, the celebrated artiste has been performing it on stage over the past three years. "Though her journey of self-discovery may sound serious, it is laced with humour and wit. It also traces her relationship with people who enter her life. The title itself conveys the story. In the late afternoon, the sun may be setting, but there is enough light, indicating that there is still time for sunset. To me, that is a reflection of the woman's life."

He has previously displayed his directorial skills with the show, Mohandas BA LLB, and the feature film Mausam (2011). Kapur hopes to bring Dopehri alive on the big screen as well "as it has been penned like a feature film."

Sanah Kapur kicked off her first film as leading lady on Monday in the presence of parents Pankaj and Supriya
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 11, 2018)

On Tuesday, Sanah Kapur, who made her acting debut in brother Shahid Kapoor’s Shaandar in 2015, kicked off her first film as the leading lady. Her parents, veteran actors Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak, were present on the sets of the Abhishek Saxena-directed Saroj Ka Rishta, to watch the mahurat shot. “We were in the middle of a scene when they walked in. Like everyone else, I want to make my parents proud. I was nervous initially but once the camera is on, you are the character and I told myself it was Sanah’s parents in front of me, not Saroj’s,” the actress tells Mirror.

The film kicked off with a song and Sanah is all praise for choreographer Shabina Khan.“She doesn’t just choreograph a song, she integrates the characters in it. I’m enjoying playing Saroj because she is dabang and moohphat which is fun,” the actress smiles.

The film, which explores a father-daughter relationship, also addresses the culture of body-shaming in India. “I feel strongly about it. It’s important to be comfortable and true to yourself because every human being is unique. It’s wrong to fit everyone in one box. If we want to change it should only be for ourselves. This subject is really close to my heart,” she expounds.

The schedule kicked off in Mumbai and the team will soon head to North India. And even though it is her first lead role, Sanah insists she isn’t feeling any pressure.

“At the moment, I’m not thinking about my responsibility towards the film. That will happen during the promotions. Right now, I’m just trying to be Saroj, bring the character out to the audience and hope they love her as much as we do,” she points out.

Any advice from big brother Shahid? “He just told me to have fun and enjoy what I love doing,” she says. When asked about Shahid’s half-brother Ishaan Khatter, whose new film, Dhadak, is to hit the marquee soon, Sanah says shortly, “I don’t have any advice for anyone except for myself. One should focus on work and be honest with their craft. I do this job because I love it.”