Cramped in the women’s compartment of the Delhi metro, I was headed from the McKinsey and Co. office in Gurgaon to The Black Box Okhla. As I walked into this big black room, I could see the profile of a lady sitting in white. It was the afternoon I met Mira Nair that changed my life. She came to shake my hand with love and greeted me kindly. I was left stumbling in my mind and with my words. As I walked up to the empty space, under the spotlight, the ecstasy of meeting a director of my dreams mixed with the nervousness of doing something that I had never done before — my first audition for a professional acting job. The jitters were soon swept away as Mira began talking to me, putting me at ease with her candour and humour, some of her most endearing qualities that I have been lucky to experience even in the most demanding scenarios, such as on the sets of filming BBC ’s adaptation of Vikram Seth’s classic, A Suitable Boy in Lucknow.

The audition on that August afternoon was for a musical adaptation of her masterpiece, Monsoon Wedding. I sang, danced and acted and felt a sense of being alive and free that I had not felt in a long time. A familiar feeling of performing in front of people that has always given me a high like no other. What began as weekend entertainment evenings for my family with an elaborate entry sequence down the wooden staircase of our home in Assam where I would appoint my father as the MC went on to become more serious stuff, like elocution competitions at boarding school where a nine-year-old me poured her soul into rehearsing TS Eliot’s Macavity, working her tiny larynx to throw her voice for the audience member sitting in the last row of the giant auditorium.

After years of acting and debating at national tournaments throughout my time at The Assam Valley School and at college in Lady Shri Ram College, I have to admit that I truly missed the adrenaline rush that came with performing for people white sitting at the office of my fancy corporate management consultancy job. So when my audition was over, it seemed as if it had all come full circle with Mira suggesting I quit my job and follow my heart. But this was only the beginning of my topsy-turvy tumbling upon the profession of being an artist and an actor. I will never forget walking out of the Black Box onto the sunny sooty Okhla streets, hopping onto an auto and looking at my reflection in the rearview mirror, crying and smiling at the same time, feeling the thrill of meeting an icon who was as inspiring in real life as in my imagination and more importantly, knowing that a world of creativity, that seemed so far out of reach, was open to all who dared to knock on its doors.

When I cast my mind back to when my parents had come from Guwahati to watch me perform in the Monsoon Wedding Musical, I recall my mother telling me, with all her best intentions, to quit acting. As worrisome as it was for her to see her daughter step into an unknown and seemingly scary world, I had to tell her that my foray into acting had hardly even begun and that I wouldn’t be giving up before trying a little harder. Moments of self-doubt and insecurity undoubtedly creep in at times when the road ahead is uncertain. At times, even convincing your mother about your career choice, becomes an act of reassuring and convincing oneself, to believe in their own dreams, no matter how wild they may seem. It takes courage to move from the corporate to the creative in our success-driven capitalist world. More so, when you are a young girl from Assam who has not seen or known any real life examples of people coming from where she has, actually making a space for themselves in the film and acting industry. 

What changed this perception for me was a serendipitous opportunity to train briefly under the expertise of Adil Hussain. He is an actor who I was a fan of after watching his movies that embodied cinema from all the way from Assam to America and what inspired me even more was his journey in pursuit of his love of acting. My learnings of the craft from him remain a bedrock but what rings louder in my ears on certain days is his answer to my question on what it takes to be an actor. To this, he said, one had to truly love acting for it is the only thing that can keep you going when nothing else falls into place as part of this unorganised profession. As simple as it sounded then, I felt the weight of his words during these strange and terrible times of the pandemic at hand. 

The whole world stood still, some in greater duress and despair than others. Never did I imagine these would be the circumstances under which our show, A Suitable Boy would be released globally. Lucky to be locked down in the comforts of my home, for the first time as an audience, I was mindful of all that that goes behind the scenes — a mammoth team’s effort of hours without numbers, scenes shot over and over again that come and pass by in seconds before a screen, with only actors from the entire production who get opportunity to be immortalised in film forever. I think back to the time of one of my first days on set where I learnt that no amount of training can ever fully prepare one for the challenges of set life. It is one of those things wherein experience becomes the greatest teacher. 

I was a bundle of nerves before my Kathak sequence. A change in setting demanded a different choreography which I had to muster up in minutes before the take. With no choreographer on set, I recalled my few years of training in acting with the master theatre director N. K. Sharma, lovingly called Pandit Ji by all, a mentor who never taught us how to act, but how to live life truthfully to the fullest, and gave in all that I had unknowingly picked when it came to performing in the most uncomfortable of situations. I remember waiting with bated breath for our shoot to begin so that I get a change to act alongside my icon, Tabu. You can never stop dreaming as an actor. If the dream was to act with Tabu one day, now after having had the opportunity of working and learning alongside her genius, the dream is to one day be as close as possible to her truthful performance. I would watch Tabu and wonder how her performances which were so entrancing and full of energy be made to look so effortlessly easy. It is in these moments I felt that I was so close yet so far from achieving the dreams that I dream of.

The road ahead is one with mysteries that will only unfold with the journey. And as I take this path, I hope to stumble upon ordinary stories of ordinary people and have the opportunity to deliver an extraordinary performance in depicting them. For there lies my greatest inspiration, the most simple moments with the most powerful emotions. It is the power of empathy that has always moved me and inspired me to act. And if there is any light at the end of this tunnel, I hope to move people just as they have phenomenally touched my life.