A breath of fresh air

She is still the chirpy girl from Delhi who chucked architecture for English literature and gave up her books for cinema. She is the same girl who loves Calvin and Hobbes and weeps inconsolablyevery time she reads Erich Segal’s Love Story, but cannot digest feminist writing, "because it is so cynical, bitter, negative and real". A girl who loves people, but cannot stand "inconsequential small talk." And even as Neha drank in her first heady gulp of adulation at the Kareeb premiere, she was still more anxious to know what her parents thought of her performance in the film. "Several people including Amitabh Bachchan complimented me and that felt great. But I was happiest to know that my family liked the film," she says.

It was also a moment of tremendous relief for the actress who didn’t ever imagine she would be a larger-than-life character on the silver screen. "When I met Saurabh Shukla at a get-together and he asked me if I would like to act in a Vinod Chopra film, I actually thought it was a big joke," she remembers. But soon she realised that it wasn’t and in no time at all, found herself in Mumbai, taking acting and dancing lessons. "I was given an audition two months after Icame here. And even then I was quite realistic about the whole thing and prepared to pack off to Delhi if I didn’t make it. After all, many accomplished actresses including Manisha Koirala had auditioned for this role," she says.

But "destiny" had written her name on it, and Neha was the chosen one. "I’d always wanted to do theatre because stage people have a certain kind of camaraderie between them and I wanted to be a part of that. I romanticised about it," she says. And although that dream wasn’t fulfilled, she did share the same feeling of kinship with the Kareeb team.

"Everyone from `Sir’ (Chopra) to my co-star Bobby Deol did everything possible to try and make me feel comfortable. That I wasn’t camera conscious also helped. I don’t really care how I look. So I didn’t need to touch up my make-up or fix my hair over and over," she says. Instead she concentrated on the make up of Neha’s mind, her personality. "As an artiste, one has to first think of how the character feels — her relationshipwith her family, her environment, her background. Her clothes and outward appearance come in much later, it’s the attitude that should sink in first," she says.

Such was the impact of the character on Shabana the person, that soon she shed her old self to become Neha herself. "I had to make sure that the pain I experienced while sitting in an awkward position with a stone sticking into my side didn’t show — because it was felt by the actress, not the character," she says. And soon the difference between the two dissolved not just for her, but for everyone in the unit as well, who "involuntarily" started addressing her as Neha even off-camera. "When someone suggested that I should adopt Neha as my screen name, I said `What’s wrong with Shabana’? But then I also felt that like the name my parents gave me, this name was also special for it marked the discovery of myself as an actress. And I decided to make it my own," says she.

Looking ahead, she knows she has to rectify her mistakes and better herself witheach film. "We have come to a stage where everybody wants to do good cinema. I hope I don’t have to do the three-songs-four-scenes routine. Because a character needs to be given space if it has to develop into something meaningful. And I’ll be glad if I can do more such roles," she says.