Interview: Manisha Koirala

Blame it on her latest spiritual trip or the years she has added to her CV, the Manisha Koirala who breezed through Calcutta on Monday for a Ladies Study Group programme was a new woman. The newfound calmness seem to add to her inherent charm. Here’s the beautiful Bombay girl talking to Pratim D. Gupta...

You lost your grandmother a few weeks back. You were very close to her...
I grew up with her. She was the one who taught me Manipuri, Bharatnatyam... My grandfather sent me to Benaras with her. So my childhood, my decision-making years have been with her. So I was extremely attached to her. She was old... A few months back I had met her. She was ready to go.

What are you getting from your spiritual journey?
Free time for myself. I want to go to Paris and learn French cooking. Maybe Bengali cuisine... I love shorshe machh... But seriously, after attaining success and fulfilling your dreams and ambitions, money and glamour, whatever, one has to be a spiritual seeker. I am giving time to that. I want to have a complete balanced life. Films have been one aspect of my life. This is another aspect.

But don’t you miss acting?
I don’t at all. I will be working. It’s not that I will never work. But work very little. So I will be enjoying work and also enjoying other things in my life. Things that make me happy.

You plan to go into production full-time. But your first one, Paisa Vasool bombed badly...
That’s the past. I have already zeroed in on a director and a script. It will be a decent film in Hindi. We should start middle of next year. But I will not act in my own productions. I would not want to combine two things.

What about direction?
That is an ambition. I am not sure I will be able to do it or not. But direction is definitely one of my dreams.

The only film you’ve signed in six months has been Sirf. Why?
Sirf is about people from different classes of society — middle class, upper class, upper middle class... How they think that the other person is happy while their own life is miserable. He’s got a bigger car; he’s got a bigger house. The person who owns all that has his own set of problems. So he thinks that the other person is happy. The grass is always greener on the other side. This aspect of life is shown by focussing on three-four stories.

There’s a spiritual overtone...
Kind of (laughs). That’s why I may have done the film.

How was the Khela experience?
Lovely. I loved playing this nagging Bengali wife. It was a very sweet character. Prosenjit’s a great actor and Rituparno (Ghosh) a fabulous director.

After exploding in Bollywood with Bombay, don’t you feel you have not done justice to your
potential?
Honestly, till the question was asked to me I didn’t feel that. But not just you, others too have asked me this question. I guess, my fans and well-wishers expected me to do a lot more than what I did. Even for me as an artiste when I watch Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, I want to be an actor like him. So, from my side as well, yes there is a vacuum. But I hope to fill that in the coming years.

Your favourite films?
Bombay, Dil Se, 1942: A Love Story...