Nichola Pais tries to decode the character R Balki brought to life.
I’m glad people have liked the film. KI & KA is a happy, fun film; I thought people would like it actually. Subconsciously you know something but it always feels surprising to see the reactions.
I’ve never seen much of a difference characterising men or women. I don’t think women have to be anything other than women, so what if they happen to have ambitions normally associated with men. That doesn’t stop them from being women. Same thing with men – men are men but they can have ambitions of anything else. The film is about the fact that nobody loses their masculinity or femininity by doing jobs that are normally associated with the opposite sex, you know. The film is about no genders, just people – that’s all there is.
When you write your character, you have a person who has these very clear cut ambitions and goals in life, who actually meets a partner who has the desires of a normal human being. She doesn’t want to miss out and wants to find somebody who fulfils that. She can go ahead and pursue her desires but it doesn’t stop her from being as insecure a person, as fragile, as doubtful… everything as a ‘person’. Whether man or woman, we share a lot of qualities. We always keep looking at the differences between men and women but we forget the similarities.
Also I feel that as a woman, Kareena is possibly the most feminine person that we have and you put a lot of ambition and aggression into her but she never stops being feminine. The beauty of the character Kia is that you never have to be any less feminine even if you have ambitions and goals. You can be vulnerable, you can be doubtful, you can have those fits of unreasonable anger, you know. I always find there is a lot more logic in the way men think and a lot more emotion in the way women think but it doesn’t make either superior to the other – they are just two people.
I don’t know anyone like Kia; she isn’t based on anyone I know but that said, every writer has a bit of Kia and a bit of Kabir in them. I have a lot of Kia and a lot of Kabir in me! So you keep vacillating between the two in your life, in your head. Sometimes you want to be really gentle and you want to give everything in your life and you want to be egoless and selfless. And sometimes you just want to be kind of really aggressive and you want to be open to illogic and open to all kinds of fits of anger. Kia’s character is complex only because she seems so straight in her desire but the fight between her femininity and her desires and career goals – that struggle is fascinating. While I was writing, I found it fascinating for a woman to never stop being a woman, whilst doing everything that a man can do.
With Vidya Balan in PAA, for a quintessential Indian woman, it was a very strong woman. It was not about losing her femininity but the fact that I’m Indian, but if I can’t get married I want to have my child and I will give my child all the love with or without the father. So there was a boldness and a new aspect. Indian woman does not mean that you have to wail the absence of the father. You can be very strong, you can be very loving, you can sacrifice everything for your child. I just feel that women are actually much stronger than men, and the strength of women is something we really underestimate in our films sometimes.
I find women characters a lot more fascinating because there is so much more to play around with… there is so much more emotion, so much more strength to play with. Tabu in
was like, ‘I like this man. So what if he is 64 years old.’ It defied the thinking that went, ‘How can you marry a man who is older than your father?’ It’s about choices.
In fact, all of them are characters of freedom of choice…A person who has made a choice and is equipping herself to live with the choice that they have made. The choice comes from your heart. Then the difficulty is the mind and the body following the desires of the heart. A woman who goes by her heart and makes her mind and body and society follow the wishes of her heart, is strength.
