Picking the brains of an ‘accidental actor’, ‘reluctant director’, and such an insouciantly cool being
Konkona Sensharma
A recurring shot in Rohan Sippy’s murder mystery, Search: The Naina Murder Case (Jio-Hotstar), is of the two cops leading the said investigation, Konkona Sen Sharma, Surya Sharma, walking side-by-side, before the camera.
Konkona is naturally petite, barely making it to Surya’s shoulders. Surya’s supposed to be the well-built badass from Delhi. And yet, whether in that walk, or any other scene, it’s easy to tell, who’s the more innately confident/commanding presence on the screen: Konkona, of course.
“In my head, I really feel I’m tall; like tall, tall,” she smiles.
Embodying characters, especially furthest from their selves, is probably what great actors do for a living. Konkona has been doing this for over two decades, “55-60 films,” multiple National/Filmfare Awards...
She considers herself an accidental actor still. As if her professional life just happened. Luck by Chance (LBC), so to say—although quite the opposite from the luckless female lead she played in Zoya Akhtar’s debut film by the same name.
Which is odd, given she is actor-director Aparna Sen’s daughter. And that’s how I first knew of her as a late-teen—observing Konkona, from a distance, wearing a black festival tote-bag, near the cafeteria.
“Woah, she’s been to Karlovy Vary (film festival), that’s pretty cool,” I whispered in my head. We went to the same college (Delhi’s St Stephen’s), over the same years.
The other college memory I have of hers is everyone around praising her performance as Goddess Kali in a production of Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana. Otherwise, you heard, saw little of her.
She says, “Since age nine, I’ve been the same — an introvert, reading on my own for hours, invisible; happy to watch than be watched…” As a character trait, one usually associates performative narcissism with mainstream actors.
“But there are all kinds of actors — not everybody wants attention,” she rightly suggests.
Also, not many will admit this, as she does, “I’m a bit of a snob. By which, I mean, I’ve high standards.” As a film buff, she grew up mainly on world cinema and regional art-house/middle-of-the-road.
It’s just that when you chat with her — as I do, for the first time with the camera on — you sense an easy/engaged conversationalist, wholly defying the self-description. Observe the overtly expressive eyes, in particular, that in its natural dance could hold a stage performance of its own!
National audiences first experienced Konkona in Aparna Sen’s Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002). She would’ve preferred a Tamilian brahmin for the eponymous role.
It’s just that her mother “tricked” her into travelling to Chennai for research. Her National Award for the film instantly alerted Bombay filmmakers to a fresh talent in town.
Up until then, Konkona says, she was looking up classified ads for jobs vacant: “Maybe something in advertising, publishing, journalism… Things you do after [an English Honours].”
What chiefly followed Mr and Mrs Iyer can best be described as Konkona’s own Mumbai trilogy — Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3 (2005), Ayan Mukerji’s debut, Wake Up Sid (2009), Zoya’s LBC (2009).
All three bound by a common thread of the outsider’s gaze from a young, independent girl, respectively, from Bhilai, Kolkata, Kanpur, shining a light on the ‘maximum city’; why, even Anurag Basu’s Life in... a Metro (2007).
Whether by destiny or design, these films established her as a uniquely understated voice in the mainstream. More so, because they’ve withstood the passage of time. As have several films leading up to them.
IMO, her most underrated movie? Aparna Sen’s 15 Park Avenue (2005). My favourite Rituparno Ghosh film? Dosar (2006), starring Konkona, Prosenjit Chatterjee. Perhaps her most adored movie, still? Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara (2006).
The Sharma in Konkona Sen Sharma, I learnt only much later, stands for her late father, Mukul Sharma. Everyone of my vintage can recall Mukul from the staple, science brain-teaser column, Mindsport, in the Sunday Times of India.
She describes Mukul’s more professional/futurist writing with the same word for her grandfather Chidananda Dasgupta’s work as film critic-historian: “dense” (expression for academic).
Besides her love for Calvin & Hobbes, Mukul’s better known contribution to Konkona’s professional life is, of course, her directorial debut, Death in the Gunj (2016) that, as a period film, stood out for such visceral feel/texture.
It was based on a story, inspired by true events, that Mukul would narrate to his li’l daughter “again and again,” much to her excitement.
Knowing that nobody would produce the script, once she wrote it — and with a producer onboard (Honey Trehan), assuming that nobody would watch it anyway — Konkona says she made the film, firstly, for herself: “I’m anyway hard to please!”
Likewise, an anecdote about a friend walking in on their house-help, making love, led to her writing-directing The Mirror that, as a short film, became a conversation-starter of sorts from Lust Stories 2 (Netflix).
From an accidental actor, she now identifies herself as a “reluctant director”. I suspect it’s this cool insouciance of simultaneously doing things, and staying distant from it, that draws us to Konkona.
Which is why I ask her what she makes of fame: “Like anything extraneous, I guess it comes and goes. I’ve enjoyed a convenient level of non-intrusive fame, though.”
What about money? She says, “It’s a great convenience. But it’s not gonna solve any internal issues, unless medical.”
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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