Kumar and Me – Mita Vashist remembers Kumar Shahani

The first film is of course special. With each film, I realised there was going to be no repetition of the old space, Kumar wasn’t going to repeat himself, so I would be called upon to be a different me each time.To be an actor in Kumar’s or Mani’s films..you had to have an understanding of the spectrum of all the arts to be able to enter their worlds. Mani, for instance, told me I should get some ideas about thumri and kathak for Siddheswari. In the film, I may not have danced kathak much, but I needed to move as if my body knew its rhythm.To be able to portray Tejo in Kasba [the daughter-in-law of a small-town entrepreneur married to his mentally challenged son], who actually runs the business, Kumar made me walk almost two hours [every day] for a week in his drawing room untill I cracked the walk of a female panther. He said: Think of her as a leisurely tigress, be someone who is alert, and is waiting for her chance…or he said: Think of Marc Chagall and his paintings where the figures float…. That walk ultimately influenced everything, the way I moved, the way I sat, the way I said my dialogues. Kumar’s frames were so elegant. So, as an actor, even if you feel you haven’t done anything, the frames have done a lot.



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