Here is a recent interview of Sarika and the actress gets candid to IBN TV
Anuradha SenGupta: When you had your first meeting with the Modys, what was it like?
Sarika: I met the Modys in my capacity as a person. And it was very difficult. I really hadn’t imagined it would be so difficult for me to face the aggrieved family
. It was like that truth, which was hanging above my head all the time, knowing that I’m going to see them (the Modys) some day. The day I met them, and the week that followed after that was really not okay.
The film’s unit kept meeting them during the making. Finally came the evening when we all saw the film together. And it turned really very painful. I told my co-star Naseer that it won’t be possible for me to meet them again.
At one point, she (Rupa Mody) just held my hand said to me: "Even you said in the end, he would come back." It’s a scary kind of an interaction that two of us were having. Here I was listening to her — the women that I am playing in the film and she was reacting to me, as if I was she. The repercussion of anything where people suffer loss is pain. She was holding on to the words, which I said in the film while playing her role.
Anuradha SenGupta: You are not a politician, not a policy maker, not a police person. As a person that you are, how do you think we can live with each other in spite of all our differences?
Sarika: It's very simple. And because it’s so simple, it won’t make sense since the problem is so huge. I really think we have to learn to let go off anger. It sounds very simple, but that is the key to solve the problem. When we made this film, people said we are 'opening wounds'. There are many families like the Modys, who went through similar pain during the post-Godhra riots.
The day we went for the shoot in Ahmedabad, one gentleman who belonged to the same locality, walked up to me and told us: “I was away for just four hours on that fateful day. When I came back, 19 members of my family were massacred."
He said he has been alone for the past five years. No family member of his is alive. Imagine the state of mind of that person who waits for a hug from somebody who is ready to fight for him. All that he wants is someone who would look after him. And when nothing happens, then what does he do?
I think had someone acknowledged the pain that these people went through during the riots, perhaps we could have averted the blasts, or maybe the number of blasts that took place later in Mumbai.
I’m not saying that any act of violence is justified. I condemn the blasts as much as I condemn the post-Godhra riots. But I want to believe that the retaliation to the post-Godhra riots could have been less had someone acknowledged the pain that the people went through during the riots. The feeling of pain and loss that these people went through is the same as what we went through during the Mumbai blasts. Both incidents were equally painful.
So, we must see where it comes from. It is the anger that people were waiting to vent out, and then they took it in their own hands. There is no end to it.
Anuradha SenGupta: So it is the ‘eye for an eye’ tendency that we need to stop from breeding?
Sarika: Absolutely. That is precisely the point.
Anuradha SenGupta: Parzania was complete about two-years ago. In fact, the national award was announced in your name. How important was that to you — the acknowledgement of yourself as an actor?
Sarika: Awards make you feel good. But it doesn’t make your performance better or worse.
Anuradha SenGupta: If you are looking for a career again as an actor, then it's important that people see this film. Isn’t it?
Sarika: I think it's important for people to see any good film of mine. There is another good film of mine which is called Bheja Fry. I liked it, and it’s really a good film. All of us want all our films to do good business and get good reviews. But it doesn’t happen all the time.
Sarika: The roles that were being offered to me were really clichéd. People make definite guidelines for you if you are making a comeback. They tell you what you must do and what you must not. They want you to play roles of Bhabhi and mother and just stand in a corner. There is nothing wrong with all these roles, but I think they are not real. They are nothing more than caricatures.
I have no issues playing a mother, but then the role should be something that is close to real life. I don’t want to do anything that makes me move away from what I am. I am not going to wear hot pants and run, neither am I going to gray my hair. I want to do what I am good at at this given point of time. I think today the industry is hundred times better than what it was earlier.
Today, be it the women in the film, or the story line, or the subject matter — anything and everything is absolutely fantastic. The kind of films that we are making today is hundred times improved than what we were making a few years back.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you wish sometimes that you were born not when you were but perhaps 15 years later?
Sarika: No, not at all.
Anuradha SenGupta: Since the industry has become a much more exciting place for an actor today, it would have been more welcoming for you?
Sarika: I don’t wish my birthday could change to a different year. Today is 2007, and I was born when I was born. I have Parzania to my credit and it's damn exciting. Maybe 15 years back, I would not have been okay with playing such a role.
Anuradha SenGupta:I remember seeing Geet Gata Chal and I loved the story and the songs in the film. But as I remember your earlier work, I get this sense that here you were this beautiful, talented woman in the industry, and then with time, your roles became smaller and smaller, and towards the early '80s you disappeared from the scene. What really happened?
Sarika: I think there was a lot of mismanagement as far as my career was concerned. It’s been three years since I am back, but you won’t see me doing the number of films one would have expected me to do. The reason why I am being choosy is because I have decided it that way. This time, I am going to handle my career my way.
If there is anybody to blame for the past failures, it’s just me. I want to correct things my way. The wait has been tough. I believe that the kind of roles I really want will come now. Not because of the success of Parzania, but because people would know what they can expect from me. At that point of time, my own career was not in my control.
Anuradha SenGupta: But it wasn’t as if you were not focused on being an actor at that point of time?
Sarika: Of course not. If you see, parallel to commercial films, I was doing very good work in all Basu Bhattacharya films. But that was not the year 2000. Had Basu Bhattacharya films been made today, they would have received much more recognition than what they got during that time.
Griha Pravesh and many other films that Bhattacharya made were good and happening, but they were not big-budget films. And during those times, people did not write much about such films. Parallel cinema was often considered ‘poor cinema’ made by people who didn’t have much money to invest in films. Very few people took it seriously. Today, it is a USP to make films such as Basu Bhattacharya did in those times. People actually say, "Wow, look actors are not wearing any makeup." You can actually write a two-page-long article talking about these things.
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