Indian cinema was never always about stars: Actress Rajshri Deshpande

Laxmi of ‘Angry Indian Goddesses’, Durga of ‘S Durga’, Subhadra of ‘Sacred Games’ and Ismat of ‘Manto". Actress Rajshri Deshpande is glad people know her on-screen characters more than they know her. Walking into a room with an audience and hearing murmurs of "Who is she? Oh, she was in 'Sacred Games'" didn't come as a disappointment to Rajshri at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at Panaji in Goa last month.

"I am glad that the kind of roles I am doing, nobody recognises me... That's the success of my characters. That's what we need to do. We need to create more and more characters from all over the place, where we (actors) are mixed with people. Let's be one colour," Rajshri told the panel. In a tete-a-tete with IANS, Rajshri said she is glad people are writing more characters for women. "More normal characters," she corrected herself, adding that what makes her feel happier is that topics which people were scared to discuss about are coming out in the open. "Earlier there used to be such characters. Our cinema was never always about stars. Our cinema was also about Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi, and that's the reason I believe cinema is cinema. I don't remember only growing up watching the stars.

I saw films like 'Bhumika' and 'Mandi'," added Rajshri, who comes from a village around Aurangabad. Her fond memories are of watching socially relevant cinema which was proudly shown by national broadcaster Doordarshan. "We have grown up watching 'Bharat Ek Khoj', not 'Star Wars'," she quipped, adding that Indian cinema just needs a bit of revival at this point. "We have become a cinema which is about who is wearing what, who goes to which gym, who did what with whom, who married whom and where, who wore what at the wedding... We are more worried about that and are forgetting the real cinema," Rajashri added.