The Reluctant Actor

“The roles I played in my earlier films were that of young,vulnerable girls,which I could have been in real life had I found myself in their situation. But I’m nothing like these two characters — I am neither dumb as Hansa nor as cruel as Dhankor,” says the veteran actor whose performance in the Bhansali film has been lauded by supporters and detractors.

In Ram-Leela,Pathak has a performance-driven part and she does justice to it,lending her scenes a sense of unpredictability and thrill. Yet Dhankor has her human side too — moments of tenderness towards her defiant daughter Leela or her reluctance to completely wipe out her enemies — which lend the character its shades of grey. “Several strong characters have emerged from rural Rajasthan and Gujarat in the past. But this one is unlike any because there’s no backstory of oppression of Dhankor; no ethos or pathos. She enjoys power and is unapologetic about it,” says Pathak,who took a while to step into Dhankor’s shoes and pull off scenes such as

the one in which she chops off Leela’s finger.

Pathak’s familiarity with the milieu helped. The culture and setting of Bhansali’s imagined world includes Bhavai — a form of folk theatre that Pathak’s mother Dina Pathak and her aunt Shanta Gandhi were exponents of. “Bhavai was my introduction to art. So its influence on the film’s texture and treatment made the process more enjoyable for me. I felt like I was returning to my roots,” she says.

However,Pathak is not too keen to carry forward her family’s theatre legacy — who were stalwarts of Indian theatre and key members of Indian People’s Theatre Movement (IPTA) in the ’50s. “My sister Ratna (Pathak Shah,stage and television actor) has the patience for it. I love acting but can’t handle the peripherals — the searching for work in films and TV,and the handling of production in theatre,” she says with a laugh.

It was fellow actor Pankaj Kapur,now her husband,who made Pathak come to terms with her talent. Kapur’s tryst with television also brought Pathak close to the medium. They started a production house to create television content — which shut down a few years later as saas-bahu sagas began to dominate television — and worked together in shows such as Mohandas BA LLB in the early ’90s. As Pathak’s involvement with the small screen increased,she distanced herself from cinema until the early 2000s.

“That’s also because I was carrying my daughter Sanah at the time,” says Pathak,adding,“I remember my mother not being around often when I fell ill or needed her because she was working. She wasn’t working in order to earn,but out of passion. I made a conscious decision to be around my children in their early years.”

Today,Pathak is disillusioned with the television medium and believes that channels view content merely as business. Her recent experience with the daily on Sony,Chhanchhan,has also been bitter as her character was diluted to transform the show,earlier pitched as progressive,into formula.

Never quite “ambitious”,the 52-year-old feels happier as a homemaker and does not need a steady flow of work to feed the ‘actor’ in her. With her daughter now seeking a big break in Bollywood and son Ruhaan leaving for the US to study,Pathak uses her free time reading and travelling. Pathak defines her ideal role as one that falls between commercial and parallel — her latest is Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic’s White Lies.

At leisure,never quite losing sight of her love for acting,Pathak prefers to watch the world rush past while she sits with a book and a cup of tea at a quaint cafe in the neighbourhood,until she gets offered the next role attractive enough to draw her out of her shell.