Kalki Koechlin to anchor a travel show!

The year has begun on a good note for Kalki Koechlin, who won the Special Jury National award for her performance as a teenage girl suffering from cerebral palsy in Margarita With A Straw. And now, the actress is gearing up to host a travel show with her father Joel Koechlin for Fox Traveller. The yet-to-be-titled show will see the father-daughter duo taking a trip to North East India. “I’ve imbibed the love for travelling from my father. He used to take me bike riding and skiing. Every year in February, I’d go trekking and skiing go to Gulmarg in Kashmir.”

The two were planning to take a trip together when the channel contacted Kalki for a travel show. “I suggested the idea of doing it with my father and they liked it,” she says. Why the North East? “It’s an undiscovered part of our country. Many are ignorant of the area and their customs. So, we decided to explore it,” she adds. Besides the TV show, Kalki is excited about getting the National Award. “Yay! It’s really encouraging when a film like Margarita is being recognised at the National Awards because it’s a daring film. It questions a lot of things about how we are in our society about reality and disability. For me, it’s really special because it’s the biggest award you can get in the country as an actor.”

Having said that, Kalki clarifies she doesn’t work for an award. “It’s like an icing on cake, a bonus. But I don’t live for an award,” she quips. The actress is now looking forward to her upcoming film Waiting, which is about the special relationship shared between two people — Kalki and Naseeruddin Shah — who befriend each other in a hospital, when their respective spouses are comatose. Kalki says, “What I loved about the film was even though it’s all about grief and has a heavy subject there’s a real sense of hope and humour. I was laughing out loud in some of the lines. It comes from the fact that these two characters are completely opposite to each other. Naseer’s character is slow-paced, he’s a khadoos, old, Philosophy professor, while my character is fast-paced, is on social media and from the advertising world. What happens when their worlds collide, the generation gap is there of course, how they communicate, become friends and learn things from each other, was interesting.”

Ask her about working with Naseer again after That Girl In The Yellow Boots and she says this time it was much easier. “The first time I was completely in awe of him. I couldn’t remember my lines because I was intimidated. This time I was much more prepared as an actor. We were discussing our scenes and it was a much more collaborative process.”

The film has already been screened at a festival and appreciated. Kalki agrees that festival screenings create a buzz for the film, but what she is really happy about is the response for the trailer that was released a few days ago. She happily says that it has got over two million views, which means “people are interested in the film”. 

Interestingly, out of the dozen or so films that Kalki has done, three of them have been directed by women. While Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara was helmed by Zoya Akhtar, Margarita With A Straw was directed by Sonali Bose, while Waiting is by Anu Menon. Her upcoming films Death In The Gunj is Konkonka Sen Sharma’s directorial debut and Love Affair will see Soni Razdan wielding the baton. Does it make a difference when a woman directs a film? “I don’t like to differentiate between genders. I have worked with three women directors so far, and they all have different personalities. The same is the case with men, everybody is unique. The only difference when you have a woman director on the sets is she understands better when you are having your periods! But maybe, in a film like Margarita With A Straw it helps because it is a little more comfortable while shooting intimate scenes.”
Kalki, who is known for her unconventional roles, has so far done a couple of masala flicks like Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, but they did not change things for her. “I think change happens in small and subtle ways. People will see and broaden their horizons once they see your capabilities. I just want to do something which pushes my boundaries as an actor. I like a script which raises my curiosity, and I have a lot of questions at the end of it.”

It’s this inherent curiosity that has prompted Kalki to make a documentary about how India has changed in the last five years. “It will touch various topics like politics, entertainment, sports etc, but I can’t talk more about it as I am shooting,” she signs off.