Rakhee Gulzar is much miffed by a certain section of the press taking advantage of her silence. “Just because I don’t react, some journalists think they can write anything. Someone wrote my husband Gulzar slapped me. I just may slap a defamation case on this. Another media outlet declared me dead. There was panic among my friends and relatives since I was out of reach. My son-in-law Govind drove down to my home to check on my wellbeing. When I opened the door he joked, ‘Bhoot Bhoot!’”
Rakhee Gulzar clarifies, “A narrative has been propagated that I am no longer keen on working and recently I was even declared dead”
The enormously elusive Rakhee Gulzar has just come back to Mumbai after a very satisfying stint at the 55th IFFI Goa International Film Festival in Goa.
Not known to travel to any festival, Rakhee in a conversation, revealed why she made an exception this time. “My first instinct was to say no politely,” she said. “But then I was told that two of my films were being shown in Goa. One of them is my new Bengali film Amar Boss, which I must say has turned out well. The other is one of my earliest film 27 Down, which they screened at Goa. It was the first time I was watching the film since it was made.”
And what did she think of herself and the film? “You mean, 27 Down? Oh, I think very highly of it. After seeing it for the first time I felt it was so ahead of its time. Do you know the director Awtar Kaul passed away a day before he was to receive the National award for Best Feature film in Hindi? The film is about a man who has to thwart his own dreams to join the railways just like his father. I played a financially independent working woman with a mind of her own. This was a rarity back then, fifty years ago.”
As for her Bengali film, she said, “In Amar Boss, I play the family matriarch, who, despite her age, makes sure the family knows she is the boss. It is co-directed by Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy, who recently had big Bangla hit Bohurupi. The film’s co-director Shiboprosad Mukherjee also plays the male lead in Amar Boss. I did another Bengali film earlier, which never got released. I am confident Amar Boss will release and get an audience.”
She is all praise for the organizers of the Goa festival. “There were no glitches,” she said. “I received a lot of love at the festival. Youngsters treated me like their own grandmother. It was all very relaxed and pleasant. I must say the current minister of Information and Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnav is taking his job seriously.”
As for doing more film Rakhee ji protested saying, “It’s not as if I am not open to offers. But where do I fit in? I am certainly not playing the typical mother or grandmother whose only reason to live is her son. I will play a role of a woman with a mind of her own as I’ve done in Amar Boss. There is a narrative being propagated in a section of the media that I am no longer keen on working, that I live outside Mumbai and recently I was even declared dead. None of these is true.”
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