Actor turned director Nandita Das believes in celebs creating awareness about unjust social norms. By Kritika Dua
Nandita Das believes that a celebrity speaking about hard hitting issues does create an impact. “There are lots of people who are doing amazing work on the ground but nobody knows about them as media is completely ignorant about them. They are the real people who use various mediums to create a difference. Unfortunately, media writes more about celebrities, becoming their mouth piece for the social causes. But when you are in a public domain you have a greater responsibility not just through your words but through your actions also. Because people are looking up to you and they take you more seriously than others.”
Das has been an active speaker for several social issues, one of which is colour discrimination. Our country has a craze for fairness. Speaking about the Dark is beautiful campaign she said, “I joined it in 2013 and by default became the face of the campaign to an extent that people thought it was my campaign while in reality I was just supporting it.”
The real idea behind the campaign was communicated and “ I have been literally stopped on the streets and on flights with people coming up thank me. Some even told me “I feel better about myself.” People took it very personally.”
This was an issue which was below the surface, nobody was really talking about it though they were aware of its existence. She said, “I am glad that such a campaign garnered a fair amount of interest, not just in the media but amongst public. Due to such campaigns the advertisement board has created stricter guidelines for fairness creams.” Its significant to talk about such issues as all the imagery around you show beauty in a standardised manner and fairness being a major aspect of it. She felt that these advertisements and the society leads women to “spend their time, money and energy trying to be someone you don’t have to be — crushing your individuality, not allowing you to celebrate who you are.”
Talking about Indian cinema, Das feels that independent films are less hierarchical. “I have mostly done independent films where its less hierarchical, its less about the glitz of things. To make an independent Hindi film is more difficult than making a regional one. They (independent filmmakers) can still afford to be more honest and less compromising which is a good thing.”
As an actor she chooses her scripts based on “what is the story trying to tell when I should be thinking of my role to be honest. However, the first I look in a story is the message and then the director’s vision and how it is being conceived. I ask myself certain questions before finalising a movie — is it challenging enough, what are the different layers and if it’s unidimensionalIJ” She added that she hasn’t grown up watching mainstream cinema and doesn’t have natural affinity towards it. “The kind of stories that interests me are the ones I am doing, without giving them a label of arthouse or mainstream.”
Her forthcoming film Manto is about is about Saadat Hasan Manto, a feminist writer who also wrote about people who are marginalised by the society and nobody wanted to write about them. “We have finished shooting. I always had Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Rasika Dugal in mind while writing the script and chose them,” she added as the interview came to an end.