At 75, Shabana Azmi is in no mood to slow down. Last month, she was seen marching alongside students and showing up to support those on hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi as part of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) protests to successfully demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan for the leaking of the National Eligibility Entrance Test papers.
After Delhi Police hurled tear bombs on the protesters, Shabana confirmed to SCREEN that she got an asthma attack. She subsequently got diagnosed with H1N1, which prevented her from participating in the subsequent Mumbai protests. Still battling bronchitis, the veteran actor could barely speak when SCREEN reached out to her for this exclusive interview. She has a busy month ahead. This Friday itself, on August 14, she’ll be seen in the two tentpole releases in cinemas — Rajkumar Santoshi’s Partition drama Batwara 1947 and Nitin Kakkar’s romantic action thriller Awarapan 2.
“To be offered such diverse parts at this stage of my career is pure luck, for which I’m v grateful,” she tells us, recalling that the closest that comes to her films releasing on the same day was in the September-October fortnight of 1983, over 40 years ago.
While her role is one of the primary characters in Batwara 1947, she has more of a “special appearance” in Awarapan 2. “I’ve played her almost indulgently rather than all fuming and blazing. One doesn’t need to display power. It reveals itself when it is understated and I find that more interesting,” says the actor, who’ll be seen going up against Emraan Hashmi’s Shivam Pandit as Nafeesa, one of the antagonists alongside Suvinder Vicky and Aniruddh Rawal, son of her Fateh (1991) and Adharm (1992) co-star Paresh Rawal.
Intergenerational collaborations like that are only a testament to Shabana’s longevity. For instance, 44 years after she headlined Mahesh Bhatt’s 1982 seminal film Arth, she was offered Awarapan 2 by his nephew and Mukesh’s son Vishesh Bhatt, who has taken over his father’s eponymous banner. “I’ve known Vishesh since he was a child, and that was reason enough for me to say yes to the film,” she confesses.
Even in Batwara 1947, she shares screen space with Sunny Deol for the first time, just three years after she starred opposite his late father Dharmendra in Karan Johar’s 2023 hit family comedy Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. Between both the films, she also collaborated with Sunny’s cousin Abhay Deol on Faraz Arif Ansari’s yet-to-be-released slice-of-life film Bun Tikki. “Only Bobby is left now,” she joked famously.
However, the film marks the first time she’s worked with Rajkumar Santoshi, a filmmaker who’s made a career out of writing strong women, from Madhuri Dixit in Pukar (2000), Rekha and Mahima Chaudhry in Lajja (2001), to Aishwarya Rai in Khakee (2004). “The character I play, Mai, is quintessential Mother Earth — warm, loving, and strong, yet vulnerable. Raj ji was very clear how he wanted her to be played, and I went along,” says Shabana.
“The Partition of Indians and the cavalier manner in which the Radcliffe line was drawn is one of the most traumatic events in our history. For a long time, a veil of silence covered any mention of it, which in some cases made the wounds even deeper. For Partition, the historical irony may be that the veil of silence helped the first generation survive — but perhaps made it harder for later generations to understand and metabolize what actually happened,” argues Shabana.
That’s why like Shah, she’s also been very vocally supportive of the Gen-Z protesters, admitting that they owe the new generation their unequivocal alliance. After almost losing hope in any kind of macro reform, her faith in dissent and change now stands restored. “It was Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 1995) in South Africa that opened the doorway to revisiting past events, so that the many stories of humanity that occurred were also recorded, along with the tragic severing of brothers from brothers,” she adds.
