Actor Shabana Azmi said she would have agreed to do any character in a Satyajit Ray film and was lucky to work with the maestro in his flick ‘Shatranj Ke Khilari’.”I consider myself very lucky to have played the role of Khurshid (in Shatranj …) and to have been cast by a director like him (Ray),” Shabana said at a literary meet in Kolkata
Asked which character of the maestro she would have liked to portray other than her role in ‘Shatranj Ke Khilari’, she said “Every single one, including children and men – anything,”
Shabana had played the role of the wife of a nobleman Mirza Sajjad Ali portrayed by late Sanjeev Kumar in ‘Shatranj ki Khilari’ (1977) based on Munshi Premchand’s short story of the same name.
Her work in the Ray film, which was set in 1856 on the eve of the Indian rebellion of 1857 when the British were about to annex the Indian State of Awadh, was only for three days, Shabana said.
Recalling the first day of her shoot for the film, Shabana said she was in jeans and tee shirt when she reached the studio.
“When I approached Ray he had asked me to get into my costume first without briefing me on my role or any scene … As I got into my costume I had realised there was a completely different posture in my sitting and moving.
“Then Manikda (as Ray is called by his friends and followers) entered the make up room and said he did not want to communicate with me about the role when I was in jeans and tee shirt. He then briefed me about the scene.”
The 67-year old actor, famous for several critically acclaimed films including ‘Ankur’, ‘Arth’, ‘Mandi’ and ‘Masoom’ besides being a theatre personality, was participating in a discussion on ‘Shatranj Ke Khiladi’ along with Suresh Jindal, the author of ‘My Adventures with Satyajit Ray: The Making of Shatranj ke Khiladi’.
Asked about Ray as a director, Azmi said, “An interesting thing about Manikda is he worked with different actors in different ways. He gave instructions to Sanjeev Kumar, while he absolutely gave none to Saeed Jaffrey.”
Asked about the film’s legacy, she said “I think to take up a literary work and transform it into a film – that to me is the legacy.”