LAHORE: Indian actor and director Nandita Das has termed direction the most fulfilling among all the feathers in her cap as all her interests, including script writing, dubbing and doing subtitles, come together in direction.

She was speaking in conversation with Moneeza Hashmi on the second day of Faiz Festival at Alhamra on Saturday.

Nandita shared that she never wanted to be an actor as when she did her Master’s in social work, acting was neither a dream nor an ambition for her and she became an actor accidently.

“I used to do street theatre with Safdar Hashmi, not to become an actor but to look into a reality different from mine and perform those plays thinking they would change the world.”

She said her first film as a professional actor was Fire of Deepa Mehta when she did not know whether she would ever do second film. She said found the story interesting even though she came from a very liberal family. She said there was a struggle going on inside her whether she should continue with acting or not but she ended up doing 40 films.

About selection of films, Nandita said she never looked at the role but the script to see whether she wanted to be a part of the story and after that she would see the director to be sure they would be able to do justice to the story.

She shared with the audience that because of Fire, she embarked on a journey in exploring the discrimination and prejudices. She said the films that she did after Fire had a lot to do with discrimination and similar kind of issues. She called Earth 1947 a beautiful story about the Partition and then came Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa of Govind Nihalani and Hari Bhari of Shyam Benegal.

Nandita called direction a collaborative process as actors usually brought something of their own.

“Most intelligent directors understand that you are not supposed to do everything. Sometimes you have an idea and the actor brings in something else which fits better than your idea.”

Nandita has brought along her book, Manto and I, she wrote after making the film on the Urdu writer.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2025