Shabana Azmi: A trailblazing actor who brought depth to her characters with grace and empathy

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In the 1970s when Hindi cinema was coming out of the chocolate box, there emerged an unconventional face that shunned the bouffant and the pout to carve a woman who refused to be a satellite to a hero. Shabana was fortunate to take the plunge when a ‘New Wave’ was taking shape and found a bunch of path-breaking filmmakers such as Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Goutam Ghose, Basu Chatterjee and Mahesh Bhatt, who tempered her talent to create an alchemy of ideas on screen. Over the years, her films might have failed but Shabana always shone bright.

Born to the illustrious actor Shaukat and poet Kaifi Azmi, Shabana’s conscience took root in a household where progressive poetry and proletariat politics wafted in the air. If the verses of Faiz and Ali Sardar Jafri distilled into her young mind from the baithaks organised in the drawing room of Kaifi’s Janki Kutir in Juhu, the robust realism of drama unfolding next door at the iconic Prithvi Theatre was hard to resist.

Shabana Azmi is known to have empathetically embraced characters from the margins.
| Photo Credit:
YOGESH CHIPLUNKAR

Strong presence

The liberal atmosphere instilled in her the belief that the role of arts is not just to entertain. Having imbibed the spirit of a communist household from a very young age, it was not difficult for her to understand the value of collaboration, which essentially every abiding work of cinema demands. Right from her first appearance on screen in Ankur, where the young, urbane Shabana immersed herself into the role of the Dakhini-speaking maid, who is seduced into an illicit relationship by her master, she empathetically embraced characters from the margins.

Shabana Azmi began her film career in 1974 with Ankur
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

Over the last five decades, Shabana has shown an amazing ability to make the mundane dramatic and the dramatic believable. She allows life to fuel her characters and preserves the residue left after her performances to inform the larger purpose of her existence where art and activism mingle without prejudice. “Art has the right to provoke as well,” she told this journalist once. Unequivocal against injustice and bigotry of all kinds, she became the voice of slum dwellers. She condemned protests against Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali’s performance in Mumbai and was among the first ones to criticise the fatwa issued against A.R. Rahman for scoring music in an Iranian film on Prophet Muhammad.

Not a switch on, switch off kind of actor, she values training and rehearsals over instinct. It is hard to find a false note in her portrayal of a Carnatic singer in Morning Raga, a performance that won her praise from Sitar maestro Pt. Ravi Shankar. Few remember that she sang ghazals for her character in Muzaffar Ali’s Anjuman and rendered Rabindra Sangeet in Aparna Sen’s Sonata.

on the sets of Shatranj ke Khiladi. Satyajit Ray explaining a scene to Shabana Azmi.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

Shabana also has this knack for humanising the insecure woman squirming at the thought of sharing someone she holds dear. She expressed different shades of this fear of disintegrating facade in Shatranj Ke Khiladi, Masoom, Pestonjee, Muhafiz and Makdee with a touch of hysteria. She loves to carry home the peculiarities of her characters to deliberate on their human condition, to put them in a social context, and returns to deliver performances that have aged gracefully like her.

Here are five films that define her charisma.

Shabana Azmi.
| Photo Credit:
SIVAKUMAR PV

Arth (1982)

Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth is to Shabana what Mother India was to Nargis. From a wife whose face turns pale at the thought of her husband leaving her for another woman to becoming a self-sufficient woman, Shabana etches Pooja with remarkable empathy and strength. Interestingly, it was one of those scenes where Bhatt didn’t allow Shabana to prepare and her instinctive response to the stimulus still induces awe.

The film provided her with an opportunity to lip sync to her father’s lyrics — “Tum Itna Kyon Muskara Rahe Ho, Kya Gham Hai Jisko Chhupa Rahe Ho — became an anthem for the aching souls.

Having grown up in a communist household where everyday existence was hand to mouth but gender equality was a given, mapping Pooja’s journey enriched Shabana’s understanding of Indian women. “My mother used to work when my poet father was not earning much. It was when I did Arth and played a character who says no to her philandering husband even after he says sorry that I realised how big a step it is,” she told this journalist in a previous interview.

The distributors felt the ending wouldn’t work because it was too much for an Indian man to say sorry and still not be accepted by his wife. The film did good business but soon Shabana started getting letters from women feeling stifled in their married life. “The last thing I wanted was to become an agony aunt but the film has proved to be cathartic for middle-class women who are yet to distinguish between a character and a real person.

Mandi (1983)

Shabana Azmi’s version of Rukmini Bai in Mandi stands stall even after many decades.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

From Ankur and Nishant to Susman and Hari Bhari, Shabana has been a constant in Shyam Benegal’s universe. Mandi is, perhaps, their most formidable work together. Playing Rukmini Bai, the madam of a brothel, she is both the hunter and the hunted in the sharp satire on the position of sex workers in society. Shabana put on weight for the role, made chewing paan a habit, and visited red light areas to create a mercurial character that turns cunning, comic, and curt to survive in filth. We have had several versions of Rukmini Bai but she stands tall in the market.

Paar (1984)

Shabana paired with Naseeruddin Shah in Paar.

With Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana formed one of the most iconic on-screen pairs in the Indian film industry. From Sparsh and Masoom to Pestonjee and Libaas, the two have created many magic moments on screen. But their dedication to bringing alive the plight of landless Dalit labourers in Goutam Ghose’s Paar remains unrivalled. The 12-minute sequence where Naurangia and Rama transport a herd of pigs across a swelling river is etched in the memory of cinephiles. Their exhaustion and exhilaration give goosebumps. “It was an emotionally and physically demanding scene but Shabana and Naseer were tremendous”, says Goutam Ghose.

Khandahar (1984)

he Mrinal Sen film is a great example of how Shabana lets the silences of her characters converse with the audience. Perhaps that’s why she is a great choice to decode literary works that don’t lend themselves easily to cinematic interpretation.In Khandahar, based on Premendra Mitra’s Bengali short story, Shabana’s Jamini personifies the ruins of relationships. Bound by duty and love for her ailing mother, alive to see the suitor of her daughter return, Jamini finds hope when a city-bred photographer enters her life but his gaze also turns out to be exploitative. Echoing the crumbling facade of the building, Shabana unravels Jamini’s mental architecture.

In Godmother, Shabana’s stunning portrayal of Rambhi won her the fifth National award for best actress.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Godmother (1999)

Throughout her astonishing career in parallel cinema, Shabana kept looking for a lane that would connect her craft with the reach of popular cinema. Early in her career, she worked with Manmohan Desai but in his universe, she was far from a driving force. She impressed cynics with the moving portrayal of a selfless mother in the Bollywood melodrama Avtaar (1983) but it was Vinay Shukla’s Godmother that challenged her to create the ruthless Rambhi, a character that has the backstory of an art house film but gradually moulds into the avenger of a mainstream entertainer. It didn’t fully fit into her worldview but Shabana delivered a stunning portrayal that won her the fifth National Award for Best Actress.