Bollywood actor-director Tannishtha Chatterjee on cancer, creativity and female solidarity

To perceive Tannishtha Chatterjee talk astir her “girl gang”, with a youthful excitement successful her voice, is to beryllium reminded of the essence of Jhumpa Lahiri’s abbreviated communicative Only Goodness from her collection Unaccustomed Earth (2008). The writer portrays sister-like bonds, albeit done a brother-sister relationship, but symbolic successful spirit, of sisters arsenic radical who transportation each different silently. For Chatterjee, the conception and powerfulness of urban sisterhood is simply a caller awakening.

Delhi-girl Chatterjee, whose household has lived successful Kenya, Australia and London, pivoted from chemistry (Sri Venkateshwara college) to dramatics (National School of Drama) portion her friends pursued medicine, biochemistry oregon biotechnology. She’s been a “drama-magnet”, she says with a laugh.

At NSD, Anwar Jamal saw her play and formed her successful Swaraaj (2003). Then she did Raja Menon’s Bollywood movie Bas Yun Hi (2003); Academy Award-winning Florian Gallenberger’s Bengali-language German movie Shadows of Time followed; and Sarah Gavron’s British film, Brick Lane (2007), “and aft that I moved to London for 5 years. I besides got joined wrong 4 months of courtship,” she says. Chatterjee, who was seen successful Devashish Makhija’s Joram (2023), has ne'er done the large Bollywood film. She quips, “I’m a benignant of a idiosyncratic who does what comes my way. I don’t spell retired and get my pictures taken. Casting directors telephone maine and I springiness my auditions precise sincerely.”

A play called life

In London, she did a batch of theatre, including a philharmonic astatine the Royal Opera House, West End. Back successful India, she did shows with Daksha Sheth Dance Company, Zuleikha Allana, Kirti Jain, Roysten Abel and Vidya Jagdale. Currently, she’s penning a musical-comedy play, Breast of Luck, on bosom cancer, with histrion Sharib Hashmi, who’s been a caregiver to his four-time, cancer-survivor wife. Hashmi is besides an histrion successful Chatterjee’s sophomore Full Plate. Her directorial debut was with the Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer Roam Rome Mein (2019).

Chatterjee was at Thiruvananthapuram, astatine the 30th International Film Festival of Kerala, wherever the Kirti Kulhari-starrer Full Plate screened successful the Indian Cinema Now segment. The film, seen done the lens of food, is inspired from the beingness of her navigator — astir a Muslim pistillate who juggles career, relationships, idiosyncratic expectations and affectional fulfilment successful modern municipality beingness — due to the fact that she wears hijab, astir radical don’t privation to prosecute her.

Making cinema with pistillate position

The manager says she’s “looking for absorbing stories. Whether it’s male-centric oregon women-centric, similar Roam Rome Mein had a antheral protagonist but it was astir a woman, the worldview and regard volition inactive beryllium mine,” she says.

I inquire her if we person regressed successful presumption of cinema writing, peculiarly successful Bollywood, and she quips, “Society, successful general, has.”

Not capable women-led roles are being written successful Hindi cinema close now. “Look astatine Rekha’s biggest hit, Umrao Jaan (1981). It was a blockbuster backmost then. Imagine a movie which is centred connected a woman, with large euphony and a bittersweet emotion story, written by a man, and that was a blockbuster, we don’t person that anymore,” she says, adding, “Some of the films that Vidya did (Kahani, Dirty Picture), those 2 were possibly the past ones, wherever are the solo women stars now, similar the yesteryear Madhubala, Meena Kumari, Mala Sinha, Suchitra Sen, Sridevi? People utilized to spell to ticker them, they would ticker an Uttam-Suchitra movie not lone due to the fact that it was an Uttam Kumar movie but a Suchitra Sen film, too. Her Hindi movie Mamta (1966) and Aandhi (1975) are driven by her, she is the cardinal quality successful spite of Dharmendra and Sanjeev Kumar, respectively, who were the large Bollywood stars, oregon Dream Girl (1977), spotlighting Hema Malini, contempt Dharmendra successful it. Now, each erstwhile successful a while, determination mightiness beryllium a Gangubai (2022), Queen (2013), Tanu Weds ManuReturns (2015), but those are excessively fewer and acold between.”

Full Plate has a “poetic ending,” quips Chatterjee, “cinema, oregon immoderate portion of art, is not conscionable documenting what is but besides trying to enactment in, arsenic artists, our vision, our constituent of presumption of the world, and however we would similar to spot the world. We brushwood the realities, each time has moments of joy, happiness and implicit conflict, and past successful the end, I privation my protagonist to interruption free.” The movie had its satellite premiere astatine the 30th Busan International Film Festival successful September, wherever it won Chatterjee the Visionary Director Award.

Stand by me: Her Bollywood sisterhood

That Chatterjee could implicit Full Plate, making of which deed respective roadblocks, and look beingness aft her crab diagnosis, she credits her “sisters”. They telephone the corporate the Dher Saara Pyaar (lots of love) group. Shabana Azmi is the leader, and its members see Urmila Matondkar, Sandhya Mridul, Tanvi Azmi, Divya Dutta, Richa Chadha, Vidya Balan, Dia Mirza, Shahana Goswami, and Konkona Sensharma. Each of these names carries a weight, 1 that comes with the heft of portraying beardown women characters connected surface and championing those disconnected it. They telephone Chatterjee “Tiger Tan”.

On January 17, astatine Javed Akhtar’s 80th day party Tannishtha Chatterjee had the clip of her life, with her miss pack successful tow. Three days later, beingness came knocking with a stopwatch, and the actor-director-playwright “kind of disappeared”.

Chatterjee, who was engaged with Full Plate, had been diagnosed with signifier 4 oligo-metastatic cancer. “My movie was successful the mediate of post-production, and everything fell apart,” she says. “My sister doesn’t unrecorded successful India (her sister and brother-in-law are academics astatine the Columbia University, New York). I americium azygous (separated from her husband). I felt precise lonely astatine that point. I had mislaid my begetter a twelvemonth back. It was the hardest for my mother, who was inactive successful depression. Also successful my attraction is my girl (who she has adopted). To woody with truthful overmuch and past to get diagnosed (with cancer), I could lone humour it; that this play besides needed to hap successful my life.”

Together, we thrive

Weeks aft her diagnosis, connected February 4, Chatterjee did not amusement up astatine Matondkar’s birthday. “I decided I would fto her observe her day and past I volition archer everybody. But it didn’t enactment retired similar that. Sandy [Mridul], Richa and others came to know, and past Urmila’s enactment turned into a ‘how to help Tannishtha’ event,” she says.

The diagnosis has made her “very fearless, but it’s besides fixed maine truthful overmuch love.” She adds, “Physically, I’m going done a batch of pain, my hairsbreadth is coming backmost now, I person nary eyebrows, I person mislaid a batch of weight, I person thinner arms now, but it is each portion of my experience, beingness is lone a bid of experiences. I don’t cognize what the aboriginal is. People inquire me: ‘Are you crab escaped now?’ I don’t know. My doctors besides can’t archer what’s successful the future. But now, I americium successful nary rush. I’m surviving each moment. We are besides blessed to beryllium artists that we tin explicit our experiences. And marque it a small larger than conscionable my idiosyncratic thing. Creative expressions helps america heal, similar the play I’m penning now.”

Chatterjee admits that “sisterhood is simply a precise caller discovery” for her. Right from her childhood, each her closest friends person been men.“Some of my precise beloved antheral friends person been a large support, too. (Actor) Sanjay Suri has been a beauteous support, Manish Hariprasad (Chennai Express subordinate producer) keeps checking connected me, my puerility person who’s a crab specialist, who I support bouncing each the questions at, comes from Delhi to spot me. They are each my sisters.” However, “slowly, arsenic we are increasing older, I realised that the benignant of compassion and emotion that you tin person and springiness (among women) is precise different,” she says.

She adds, “Because I’m getting a broadside effect of radiation close now, the different day, Dia called and gave maine a database of numbers, Vidya fixed an assignment and picked maine up. All that is perpetually there. This year, I read Radical Remission (by Kelly A. Turner) and, past it was getting excessively overmuch and I didn’t privation to work astir crab anymore. So, I started speechmaking fabrication (Butter by Asako Yuzuki) and poesy by Rumi, and Sandy’s (Mridul) publication of poems, titled Untamed, which are beautiful. Shabana sends maine videos of exercises, which I’m doing. It’s conscionable amazing.”

Earlier, Dher Saara Pyaar was conscionable a “fun group, wherever we met, laughed, joked astir and talked astir things that radical can’t speech astir successful public. But erstwhile this happened to me, each of america realised that there’s work and attraction too. It’s this radical arsenic good arsenic my friends and household who person been truthful beautifully supportive,” shares Chatterjee.

tanushree.ghosh@thehindu.co.in