Any work of art is to make audiences perceive things differently: Konkona

Little did Konkona Sen Sharma expect that her directorial debut, A Death in the Gunj would fetch her so many laurels. She was in Chennai on Sunday to receive yet another honour at the Gollapudi Srinivas Memorial National Awards as the best debut director for 2017. It was a pleasant afternoon and we caught up with the actor to get a glimpse of the cinema industry through her eyes. We start off with a fun fact about how she had come to Chennai around 2001 to research for a film. “I was initially hesitant to play Meenakshi in Mr and Mrs. Iyer so I told my mother, Aparna Sen, to select a Tamilian. She was smart though, because she knew sending me here would help me prep well for the role and imbibe the culture. So I spent time with a few family friends to learn about the difference between Shaivism and Vaishnavism, visited some temples, found out what kind of names people give their children… I got a fully immersive experience of the city and people and loved my time here,” she begins with a smile. Ask her if there’s anything in particular that she’d like to do here and she says, “I would love to become an expert on all the different aspects of South India like food, films and music if I ever get the time!”

A Death in the Gunj was based on a short story that her father narrated to her when she was younger. The mysterious web of the tale had her hooked so she eventually converted it into a script. While it received tremendous response in film festivals across the globe, it won the hearts of many Indians and has got a special place reserved for it on Amazon Prime too. These days it’s all about ‘Netflix and chill’ anyway, Konkona gives this transition between cinema and streaming sites a nod of approval. “I enjoy watching films on a laptop because I’m more passionate about intimate stories and independent cinema that more often than not, don’t release in India. So adapting to watching movies at home is good,” she clarifies.

Be it while watching a movie or reading, Konkona has the habit of getting immersed in the pages and imagining situations from the characters’ perspective. She says, “The point of any work of art is to make its audience see things from a different angle. Cinema and books help me get out of my own head space and I think it’s very healthy to do this because it opens me up to new experiences. I go through the pain or trauma of the character so it becomes a lesson that shapes my life.”

If not for a career as an actor and director, she had once said in an interview that she might’ve been a journalist, but what she would have wanted to write? “I casually thought on many days I would have liked to get into advertising, publishing or journalism, because I have a degree in English. However, I was quite the dreamer and drifter in college so I didn’t put too much thought into it. If given a chance, I would love to write human interest stories that narrate a set of experiences which we normally don’t hear of. That’s how I feel about a Death in the Gunj,” she summarises.