What makes Raakhee a self-made woman?

Subhash K Jha

Raakhee can't stop praising Aishwarya Rai and Arjun Rampal. She has just returned from Cape Town, South Africa, after a long stint of Rai's debut home production Dil Ka Rishta, which stars the three of them.

"I had a lovely time, but it was very exhausting. After shooting for Rituparno Ghosh's Shubho Mahurat, I shot for Suneel Darshan's Talaash, and then rushed to South Africa. I'm not used to working at this pace," Raakhee laments.

The actress has returned to Bengali films after ten years. "I think I have done ten Bengali films. The last one in 1993. After that, the offers weren't challenging enough." Raakhee plays a matronly Bengali detective in Ghosh's stylish whodunit, featuring Sharmila Tagore and Nandita Das. "The role is unlike what I am generally required to do. I am tired of living up to my image of serious, weepy matriarch. Shubho Mahurat gives me a chance to mouth intelligent and humorous lines. Though Ghosh's dialogues will make audiences laugh, I don't play the comedienne," she says.

Before this film, Raakhee and Sharmila acted once in Yash Chopra's Daag, 30 years ago. Laughs Raakhee, "At that time, the press had really played up the 'rivalry' between us. So when we got together again, the Kolkata press were waiting for fireworks between us. But we disappointed everyone."

Raakhee candidly admits that her co-star has the meaty role. "But when have I ever been discouraged by lack of footage? From the time I entered the Hindi film industry with a bit role in Sunil Dutt’s Reshma Aur Shera, I have always taken up the challenge of making space for myself within a limited footage."

The actress admits that she's very selective about her roles. She has three films on her hand. "That’s too many for me. But I didn’t plan it this way. I had signed Suneel Darshan’s Talaash, where I play a psychologically disturbed woman and Akshay Kumar's mother, long before Rituparno Ghosh's Shubho Mahurat, and Aishwarya Rai's home production Dil Ka Rishta. Suneel's film got delayed.

"Hence this bottleneck in my career," she says.

Raakhee last worked with Suneel Darshan in Ek Rishta: The Bond Of Love, which reunited her with her most successful co-star Amitabh Bachchan.

In Talaash, her screen husband is played by Suresh Oberoi, the father of the latest sensation in the Hindi film industry, Vivek. Suresh had played her husband nearly three decades ago in one of Raakhee's most well known films Shraddhanjali.

"Nothing has changed. Whether it is Sharmila in Shubho Mahurat or Suresh in Talaash, I met them as though we had been apart only for a few months instead of several decades," laughs Raakhee.

Then she adds mischievously. "Do you know in Dil Ka Rishta, I play a mother to a daughter for the first time? So far I've only been cine-ma to sons."

Speaking about her daughter Meghna's debut film Filhaal, she says, "She’s just 26! And she made such a complex film. Like me, she's a self-made woman. When I came into Hindi films, I had no godfather. Bosky, too, will find her own level in life. She didn't deserve the nasty reviews that she got in Mumbai. In Kolkata, people couldn't stop praising Filhaal."