Break the pattern, says Yami Gautam Dhar, whose judicious choice of scripts has defined her career
Marriage, motherhood and a career going great guns…pretty as a peach, talented actress Yami Gautam Dhar has every reason to be pleased. Only more than her professional accomplishments, she measures happiness on the personal meter. If motherhood has transformed her into another Yami, marriage has been another defining and fulfilling phase.
Married for four years, she is all praise for her other half, renowned filmmaker Aditya Dhar with whom she shares many traits, including love for home-cooked food. In a lighter vein, she shares, “Mostly he cooks but I too have upped my cooking skills.”
As for the art of acting, indeed, her Uri director Aditya has changed her perspective not only on cinema but histrionics too. ‘Break the pattern’ is a phrase she utters repeatedly and has indeed borrowed from him. Having worked with some of the finest directors in the country, from Shoojit Sircar (Vicky Donor) to Sriram Raghavan ( Badlapur), and now Suparn Varma( a film on Shah Bano), she admits, “Directors do shape your craft and a good director will always push you. Cinema is indeed a director’s medium.” Thus while choosing scripts they figure high on her agenda.
However, she is tightlipped about her the film on Shah Bano for it has always been her professional policy to not jump the gun and let it be the prerogative of the producers to introduce the project. So, she does not commit whether playing Shah Bano, the woman whose lawsuit has redefined the right of Muslim women to seek maintenance, is her most challenging part.
Real or fictional, she asserts the beauty of any film or part lies in the detailing and depth the script entails. Of course, viewers’ imagination is teased when makers claim the film is based on true events. But even when there is a fictional character, like say Pari in Bala, hard work is no less arduous.
As for her stellar role in Article 370, which won her much acclaim, she reminds us how the character of Zooni Haksar was sourced in the feats of not one but two intelligence officers.
Since she continues to receive love for Article 370, her response to those critics who called it a propaganda movie, is rather acerbic. She fumes, “If patriotism is propaganda for someone, how can you have a discussion. What is good or bad is subjective.” But her grouse is, “Are they really fair, for they go on to champion something which is so average.”
Understanding the key difference between criticism and critical evaluation, what matters to her are audiences. Same is the mantra of her spouse, who she feels bridges the divide between classes and masses with ease.
While she won’t say much about her upcoming film she gushes over Aditya’s next Dhurandhar, a spy action thriller, rushes of which she has been privy to. Besides, she muses, “The tough times that the industry is going through, anyone who is getting an opportunity to make a film is fortunate and must be very responsible. To draw audiences to theatres in the current situation is no mean task.”
Indeed, she has achieved the impossible and has been a part of hits like Bala, Uri, Oh My God 2 and Article 370 and also had a reasonable run on OTT with films like A Thursday. We wonder if success has changed her. “Not a bit. Yet, I have not lost sight of what has led me to this path.” Judicious choice of scripts is what has defined her career. As she is headlining one film after another, would she say yes to a part like one in Kaabil, where she got into the skin of a visually challenged woman yet compared to her co-actor Hrithik Roshan her screen-time was limited? The otherwise affable actress takes offence. She argues, “This is the narrative that bothers me. While we laud Hollywood when Robert Downey Junior gets an Oscar for a supporting role in Oppenheimer and Rami Malek plays a cameo in the same film, here we continue to measure an actor’s mettle by the hackneyed yardstick of the length of the role.”
So, in near future we will see her in a movie which has an ensemble cast. Of course, as success has given her confidence and empowered her, she will not take less than what she deserves. How worthy this Chandigarh girl is, has been proven more than once.
Though she calls Mumbai her karambhoomi, which has made her who she is, City Beautiful where she grew up is, ‘pure emotion.’ Chandigarh may have changed over the years she continues to view it with nostalgia dipped lens. Recently as she took her little one for a stroll in Sector 17 memories of the Chandigarh carnival and Diwali hustle bustle rushed back. She muses, “I may not remember what happened a few days ago, but those childhood years are deeply imbedded in my consciousness.” Once she may have shied to even read out a small poem on her school podium. But today as she effortlessly delivers monologues, she has not forgotten that the seed for the actor in her was sown in this very soil to which she is forever indebted and proud of. And Chandigarh can take equal pride in her journey which is only meant to go further ahead.
Lifestyle