C H I T C HAT
Ahalya is a Regular
Woman Just Being Herself
A
Radhika Apte
ctress Radhika Apte has been the subject of several recent headlines praising her performance
as the seductive young wife of an older man who
forms one-third of a complicated and adulterous triangle
in director Sujoy Ghosh's Ahalya, a short film that updates a tale from the Ramayana with a feminist and supernatural spin.
Speaking to the 29-year-old actress on the phone, we
asked her what had attracted her to the character of Ahalya. "The character was very unique and not one that
I've played before. The element of underlying seductiveness and the new interpretation of a mythological story
was interesting. Playing Gautama's wife was extremely
exciting. Sujoy and I have been trying for a while to work
together and this was a good opportunity," she said. In
Sujoy's retelling, the punishment for illicit love is visited
not on Ahalya - as is traditional - but on Indra, who is
disguised as her husband. Noting the complicity of everyone involved, Radhika said, "It talks about how a lot
of things are not black and white. Gautam Sadhu leads
Indra into a trap, in a way. And Ahalya is also part of the
seduction, she touches him with a finger and her feet
when she sits. Everybody is involved in it in one way or
the other. Indra is attracted to her and she's doing things
to increase his attraction for her. From the moment she
opens the door to the way she goes up the stairs and
looks back at him, when she's sitting down to serve tea.
It's not like Gautam Sadhu doesn't notice what she does.
So it's not black and white." She added that Sujoy had
briefed her about the character's body language. She
also said that the film does not judge anyone, certainly
not Ahalya who is just a 'regular' young woman. "It's not
obvious that she knows she's beautiful. Also, the way
she offers him tea and coffee is very normal. She's just
being herself in the sense that she's not even dressed
up, she's just wearing what she would at home. She's
not made up, hasn't tidied her hair. She's a very regular
2015 woman," Radhika said. Radhika thinks it's important that the traditional stories and epics be told along
with modern interpretations. "Some of the traditional stories were way ahead of their time - very complex and layered and reflected the society and culture of the time. It's
very interesting to see how modern interpretations also
reflect today's society and culture," she said. Radhika,
who's been appearing in films since 2005, has made
several movies in regional languages. Ahalya, which is
partly in Bengali and partly in English, is her fourth Bengali film. "In the first film (2009's Antaheen opposite Rahul Bose), I wasn't a Bengali. My character was almost
like an outsider. But now I've got the hang of the people,
the culture, the way they speak, the way they react to
things because I have so many Bengali friends and I've
stayed there for a while when I was working," she told
us. We had to ask Radhika about working with Bengali
great Soumitra Chatterjee for the second time. They costarred in 2013's Rupkatha Noy and Mr Chatterjee plays
the older husband Gautam Sadhu in Ahalya. "The nervous energy from the first time went away. He greeted
me with such warmth that it broke the ice completely and
I didn't feel stressed about working with him at all. It was
a warm, friendly interaction and he's just so charming
that it was just a lot of fun. I asked him a lot questions and
he was commenting on how I should look and so many
things. So many of his films, like Charulata, we