THE ACTRESS EYES DIVERSE GENRES
AN EXPLOSIVE acting career saw Isha Koppikar deliver dynamite performances in high-profile Indian films in various languages and genres before she slowed down to start a family.
After taking a step back from stardom, the versatile actress with a powerful screen presence is now making a welcome return in forthcoming projects across various mediums that include the web space and cinema. Like before she will be taking on diverse parts across all the genres.
When Eastern Eye caught up with Isha to speak about her career, motherhood, comeback, and future hopes, it quickly became apparent the beautiful actress had lost none of her star presence and still has that million-dollar smile.
How do you look back on your career as an actress?
I knew it was going to be hard. I just didn’t know it was going to be this hard. It takes persistence to have a life in this business. If you really are going to spend your life as an actor, then the fact is that your success and failure is one-film old. This business is not for the faint-hearted. It takes a lot of hard work and belief in yourself to even feel like you’ve got a hold of the bottom rung of the ladder.
What are key lessons it taught you when you look back?
You must learn to be patient, wait your turn and work on your skills every day. You need to work every day. That includes auditioning, doing mailings, but it is also working out, eating healthy, seeing plays, movies, new TV shows, and honing your skills. Your job is to learn the business. It’s ‘learnable’, but you do have to learn it. I don’t need to look back as I still feel like a freshie full of exuberance waiting for my next best movie and role.
Which among your many roles is closest to your heart?
Every role I have essayed has taught me something – either from the role or the people I have worked with in the film. Shabri, Kyaa Kool Hai Hum and Ek Vivaah Aisa Bhi are some of the best and most memorable.
You slowed down after starting a family. How has that phase of your life been like?
Anything new you take up in life needs time, attention, and patience. As an actor, I have played all my roles to the best of my ability. (Smiles) Likewise, being a wife and then a mother is a new real-life role that I took on, and I had to play it successfully for a lifetime super-hit film and achievement award.
How has motherhood changed you?
Motherhood changes everyone because you start accepting responsibility for another person. It’s changed me in a lot of ways. Every day I wake up and learn something new with, and from, Rianna. She has taught me how to be patient and love unconditionally. Being a mother is the best feeling in the world. I am extremely lucky to have a daughter like Rianna, who is so talented, kind and so compassionate already, at such a young age.
What is the secret of balancing family life with work?
I meditate, pray, and also prioritise. For me work and family both are equally important, but I think learning how to prioritise is the key.
What does a project need to have for you to say yes?
A great script! For me, it’s all about the story we are telling the audience. If the script is great and engaging, and it’s a credible producer then I am on board.
Tell us something about your forthcoming projects?
I have got some projects lined up and my last schedule of the shoot is still pending. I shall talk to you about it very very soon, I promise.
You have played a wide array of characters in your career, but do you have a dream role?
Yes, I would love to play a double role and maybe also portray a warrior in a historical epic.
What do you enjoy watching as an audience member?
I enjoy watching comedy. I think that’s a genre that I enjoy watching as well as portraying too.
What is the plan going forward?
The plan is to be a successful human being and touch lives in whichever manner possible, through my work and business.
Who would you love to work with?
Tom Cruise, J-Lo, Amitabh Bachchan, Julia Roberts and Robert De Niro.
What inspires you?
Kindness, goodness in people to overlook flaws in others and love unconditionally without judgement.
What is the biggest life lesson lockdown taught you?
The lockdown has taught me to believe in the simple things. Life is uncertain! The pandemic came to us as a black swan, but it also made us realise that family time and our health is the most important. What we addressed during the lockdown was – we took care of our health, we took care of our family, we spent time with our family, we worked from home, we ate home-cooked meals, and we focused on ourselves as well as what is most important to us.
Why do you love cinema?
Somebody once said, ‘cinema is truth 24 times a second’. Cinema has the rarest quality for an art form, which is of being true to itself. Cinema is our life’s reflection. It breathes life into lonely and desolated people. It picks them up. It awakens the ‘inner you’ by exploration and realisation. It can evoke romance, joy, anger, sadness, envy, shame and so many other emotions in you. Cinema is also a powerful tool to express matters of social concern. I feel that cinema has the power to convey a message like no other art form.
Instagram: @isha_konnects
The actor’s evolving style from youth to maturity getty images
Aamir Khan embracing vintage looks with classic charmgetty images
Bold and dramatic changes defining Aamir Khan’s careergetty images
From rugged to refined Aamir Khan’s versatile appearancesgetty images
Memorable film moments showcasing Aamir Khan’s unique stylegetty images
Aamir Khan’s blend of classic and contemporary fashiongetty images
Aamir Khan’s dedication to authentic character portrayals getty images
Cinematic milestones reflected in Aamir Khan’s on-screen imagegetty images
A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5