Back in Practice

Students held up cellphone cameras and cheered when the star arrived. A group of B-boys from the college performed to Aaj raat ka scene and Bandeyaa, songs from Jazbaa. Dressed in black, with riding boots and hair pulled back in a bun, the actor presented her glamourous foot forward. She posed with fans, who had come with selfie sticks. “There’s no right or wrong in law. You practise it well and your job is to win a case,” said Rai-Bachchan. She added that choosing Jazbaa had been easy. “The script did it for me. It is gripping, pacy and typical to Sanjay Gupta’s style of contemporary, edgy filmmaking,” she said.

Did she enrich her character as a mother with experiences of raising her now-three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Aradhya?

Rai-Bachchan answered that motherhood added depth in the way she played Anuradha Verma. “I could play the character in a more nuanced way because I am a mother now. I could bring in a sense of drama without being overt and every pulse and heartbeat of mine was committed to the moment,” she said.