Ratna Pathak Shah's IV with TOI

Ratna Pathak Shah, 57, is independent, impatient and extremely rational. While she may be a worrier much like her mother Dina Pathak, she is able to keep a handle on it unlike her mother, who was always hyper. Ahead of her upcoming romantic comedy Khoobsurat, where she plays the part her mother played in the original, she talks to Bombay Times about her Parsi values, her emotional anchor Naseeruddin Shah and why she misses her mother. Excerpts:

How did you become an actor?

People presumed that since my mom was an actor, I would become one, even though for a long time, I did not want to. But eventually , I started doing theatre and started enjoying it very much. My second play was with Satyadev Dubey that also had three other actors from NSD, including Naseer and Om Puri. Seeing them, I realised the difference between me and them and decided to go to NSD to study acting. While that was at that point the best way for me to train myself, at NSD, I learnt everything but acting. It had no acting teachers and there was a very ad hoc teaching system. Their style of acting was such that everyone seemed to be talking to a crowd of thousands. They were more involved with the appearance and the manner of the performance rather than the substance of the performance, with big voices, big costumes, big drama. BV Karanth, who was the director at that time, tried to change things, but it is not easy to drop that kind of mannered acting and there was nothing else to supplant it with. When I came back, I realised that I did not personally like to watch that style of acting as an audience and wondered how I would go about learning the other style of acting that I personally liked.Television came to my aid more than films, as I didn't get any films that could push me into any great discoveries. I got to be a part of a sitcom with my sister Supriya in Idhar Udhar , but I didn't think of myself as a comic actress. I was going to be a dramatic actress, playing roles like Lady Macbeth, but this was the only paying job I got and possibly couldn't say a no to it. But somebody up there was looking out for you, as Idhar Udhar turned out to be a great liberation. When the director narrated it to me, I thought I was obviously going to be offered to play the straitlaced officious kind of person, but when he finished the narration and told me that he wanted me to play Sunita, my jaw dropped as that is the part that my sister Supriya Pathak Kapur does well. It was such a relief to know that he wanted to cast against type. And that was good for both of us and helped us extend our selves. Naseer and I had got married by this time, but did not have a television at home and thus we would not see our serial. While it was exciting to be the pioneer of some kind on television, unfortunately instead of getting better, television in India seems to be getting worse. Television has always had great potential, still does, but trust us to go and mess that as well. I didn't get interesting work in films, but theatre kept me going. And in a way that again was a blessing.Even if I had got roles, it would have been those of sisters of heroines.What do heroines in Hindi movies do except weep a lot and sing a lot? What kind of learning would that have given me as an actress? Whereas in theatre, I could do Shaw and Shakespeare, pushing myself to do things that I didn't know how to do. I constantly learn in theatre and that is the happiest thing for me.

Your sister Supriya Pathak missed the presence of her mother while growing up. What about you?

It was a very happy childhood as far I was concerned. We lived in Parsi Colony . I had a whole bunch of people who lived around us. She felt that her mother was not as much available to her. I, in fact, very often would wait for maa to leave the house to get on to do my own thing. I didn't need to have her around all the time. Also, we were surrounded by a bunch of so many supportive people all around us, my mami who was a second mother to us, my grandmom and Sita bai, who brought us up. If you got into trouble, you always had somewhere to go to. I wanted to be independent. I never felt the lack of my parents being around. I don't know what my children think. But our lives have been like that too. We are both working people.Our kids from day one have been used to comings and goings. I think it is perfectly alright as they have grown up, able and happy , capable of looking after themselves.I don't want to a create world of dependence. I hear a lot of parents say , 'I want to give my child everything that I didn't have.' But what about the learning you got out of the things you didn't have? How much growth, push and energy that gave your search. You want to give everything to your kids and make them nincompoops. I left home at 25 and didn't know how to buy things and how to manage a home. But you learn and that is how you become who you are. I am also a very secure mother when it comes to my children. And I don't want to know everything about them and I don't want to run their lives for sure. I can barely run my own life, so why would I want to run theirs? I can see that they are bright sensible people and don't need me to tell them what to do.Parsi Colony was a lovely place for us to grow up in. It had a healthy , happy environment and was the most beautiful part of Bombay then. In about 3 sq kms, there were about 18 gardens. Parsis are wonderful people and you can learn values from them that you can use for the rest of your life of how to be a good citizen, how to behave with decency and civility to everyone you meet, to be honest and stand up for your beliefs, to be kind and be able to just have a great time.

What is Naseer sahab like?

He is a very fair person. He is a very private person. He is a very generous actor to work with. And he is an extremely focused person.Acting is really all that he cares about. To see that kind of passion and committed focus can be extremely inspiring. As a person, he is quite a special person, that is not to say that he is not a difficult person. All special people are difficult. But I suppose, that can be said about me too.But the point is that you see what you get. He is very transparent and has no chal kapat. Naseer is a person who calls a spade a spade, and when you are at the receiving end, it's not all pleasant. So it is a hard thing to live with a person who has such a sharp eye and such a low tolerance for bullshit. But it's a good thing and I would recommend it to everyone as the alternative is awful.

What are you like?

Hopefully similar, as in, no chal kapat. I don't much care about that. I am impa tient. That's what everyone tells me and I tend to agree, but I am rational. I could well be a snob in the sense that I do find people, who don't think things through, irritating and I find that kind of kaam chori extraordinarily difficult to take. I do think that I am a thoughtful person rather than an emotionally reactive person but I am also emotional.

You play the part your mother Dina Pathak played in the original Khubsoorat. Any nostalgia?
I have very little nostalgia. I do remember seeing the film and that a lot of people were appreciative of the film particularly of maa's work in it. But I thought that she was much nicer in Golmaal. But as it happens, I have done a Golmaal and now I am doing a Khoobsurat.

Do you miss your mother?

Very much. Not just as a mother, but she was someone whose opinion of my performances I could trust very blindly , whose support I had in every way . I could talk to maa about practically everything and she was a very dear friend by the time she left. We had got past the unhappy time between mother and daughter. We both had come to accept and therefore, like each other.

Supriyaji feels that you were her favourite?

That's what Supriya keeps saying. I was the more bossy one so I got more attention. I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. I was doing what I was expected to do.But I suppose Supriya and my cousin brother, who grew up together, must have suffered.

Who is your emotional anchor?

Naseer, to some extent, for sure. He is very much my bouncing board for ideas.Particularly in matters of either the profession or , matter of the heart, he is very wise in the way he advises you. Also I feel that yoga very slowly over very , many years has finally made me a more stable and a more thoughtful person. I have a short temper and while I try not to shout loudly , I love it.

Have you taken after your mother?

In several ways. I am a wor rier like she was. I try and take a grip on it but she did. n't. I know how I hated her ability to worry everyone under the table. We just had to step out of the house and she would be worried. She would be expecting the worst all the time, that she would be run over by a car soon, silly worrier. I too, to , an extent am like that, but I manage to keep a handle on it most of the time. I am also a bit of self-pitier I suppose, just the way she was. But the nicer things that I may have taken from her is her interest in people.

She could get on with every one everywhere. She could care very deeply about peo ple she loved. I can too.

Are there times you miss her?

Yes, specially when we are opening a new play . There was one place she would always be sitting during dress rehearsals. She would always be there and I would look out for that lovely laugh of hers that would ring out in the auditorium or her sob once in a while when she was moved. I miss her big time when we do a show. She was also a fantas. tic grandmother. Unlike her, I am a very rational mother.

She was a very hyper and emotional mother. She did not force her ideas down our l throat too much, but she cer tainly forced her fears down our throat. If we had mobile phones when we were grow ing up, we would have gone mad.