Punjabi by heart, Taapsee Pannu gets candid and talks about her latest release and her incident of eve teasing in Delhi. Ankita Jain reports
Clad in a printed day dress with minimum makeup, Taapsee Pannu, born and brought up in Delhi, is comfortable in her skin. She talks so fast that we would lose a rapid fire round to her. She hates selfies and auditions. “I had no idea about acting when I started. Once the directors met me during a modelling assignment down the South, they said that they would make me act. But acting is always a spontaneous and reactive job, I can’t audition ever. I can’t act with one light and one camera and someone says- ‘now you act.’ I have to go the set, where I have the co-actors and the ambience. I am as raw and as real as it gets”, she laughed.
Talking about her latest film on courtroom drama revolving around crimes against women in cities, she said, “Pink was easy because of the girl bonding on the sets. We lived like an entity during the shoot. We were told that me, Kirti and Andrea, the three leading girls in the film, were one and that’s how it has to go ahead. I was briefed that not even for a moment in the film it should be felt that we are three different people. Each one of us got affected by whatever happened to the other person, and this way we could bring a larger impact on the audience. We got the knack of it and used to be together for more than 12 hours a day. We ate together, lived together in Delhi. After all actresses can be really good friends too.”
As for working with the legendary Amitabh Bachchan, she said, “I don’t get excited about big stars but working with him was brilliant. I just did the scenes considering him as a normal person and that’s how I could give my best.”
The girl, who has played varied roles from an undercover officer in Baby, to a vulnerable girl fighting a molestation case in Pink, narrated her experience of eve teasing in the capital city during her college days, “It has all happened, people have touched me on the wrong side; they have rubbed against me, they have passed comments like anything in the DTC buses. During those days, eve-teasing and prank calls were a daily nightmare for me, I had turned a deaf ear to them. I would rather feel it was my mistake; I might not have dressed appropriately. After all this is the thing told to every girl here by their own parents. You shouldn’t wear short dresses; you shouldn’t go out after 9 at night were the usual complaints by my dad.”
She also recounted an incident when she was 14 or 15. “Once outside a gurudwara, I was standing in a line during Guru Nanak Dev’s birth anniversary. I was with one of my friends and I knew somebody would try to touch me as I had suffered it earlier also. So I kept my hand at my back. When somebody tried to touch me, I could stop him through my hands but I didn’t have that much strength to move back and see who he was.”
This Delhilite now is aware of many laws protecting women through the film and also looks forward to giving lectures in one of the Delhi University colleges against the slut-shaming attitude every girl has to deal with.
“It took me a week to come out of the molested girl character after the shoot was over. I used to sit alone at home, break down easily and was also low all day long”, expressed Taapsee who believes in meaningful cinema and is selective about her roles.
Playing the character named Mrinal in the film, she also rightly pointed out to the taboo of virginity in Indian society. “The question of virginity should involve both the genders. Why should only girls be asked thisIJ”
Further connecting herself with the character, she said, “This is the first film I’ve done with absolutely no makeup. And believe me, it was liberating. I’ve always felt burdened with the excessive paint that we girls are required to put on for the camera. I don’t use any makeup in real life. I don't even know how to apply eyeliner on my own. Also, none of the actors used glycerine for any of the scenes. In many ways, the character I play in Pink is closest to who I am in real life, though luckily I’ve never gone through what my character has to suffer in the film.”