Sanober Pardiwalla

The anxiety owing to her work-related hazards that consumes us after browsing through Sanober Pardiwalla's list of stunt-work in Bollywood is rendered rather redundant when she takes us through the practices she has mastered, over the years. "I had a black belt in karate at the age of 12, and went on to learn other [forms of] martial arts, including muay thai and jiu jitsu. Six years ago, I also took up the Shaolin temple training in China, which even American [soldiers] fear trying," says the stunt-woman, who, apart from working in Hollywood films like Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and A Hundred Foot Journey (2014), has doubled for actors including Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Deepika Padukone, and Sonakshi Sinha. "The [training] completely rips you apart. We lived two kilometres uphill from the training centre. [Partakers] have to walk down to the camp. To learn kung fu, one must forget everything that has been previously learnt.

Training is conducted in two parts — three hours in the morning, and two hours in the evening. It is [brutal]. If you survive it, making the two-kilometres return uphill with the [equipment] is tough. And food is only available up there. What is available is boiled rice and cabbage. You need to eat that every day for a month. So, it teaches you mental endurance and enables the body to adapt." Her achievements don't end there. An affinity for underwater stunts encouraged Pardiwalla to became an advanced deep-sea diver too, she tells us, prompting us to enquire if the challenges that Bollywood's action directors pose, rattle her at all. "The stunts that we perform seem 10 notches lower than what I'm used to practicing," she admits.