Subhash Ghai’s Taal, which was released on August 13, 1999, left at least one member of the cast embittered for life. We are talking about the highly accomplished Mita Vashisht. Taal was her first big commercial Hindi film. “Yes, and that too with Subhash Ghai. I was never in awe of him that he is such a big director and has such hit films and is a star maker. He used to say, ‘I have given many stars to the industry.’ So I said, ‘Yes, it is okay but you are not making me, I am already Mita Vashisht, thank you.’ You know, we used to joke like this.
Mr. Ghai had a very interesting observation about a mainstream heroine. He had very interesting insights into why she should not look intelligent, she has to be more beautiful and not sexy because you should feel that you should bring her home to your mother, this is the type of heroine required in a Hindi film. I used to understand that she is beautiful but not sensuous, and in those days the industry was such that it was very conventional. The standard of heroines was there. You know, it was not like today, so somewhere it was a very interesting learning process for me. Once he started telling me, do it like this, do it like that.
So I listened to him for a while. Then I said, ‘Look Subhashji, I am playing Prabha. I am a woman, I am a girl, my body is of a different kind, you are a chubby person, you are a man. So don’t show me what I have to do. Just tell me what you want. But I will not copy you, I cannot copy you because your body and your everything is different and I have to play Prabha, you are not supposed to play her like this.’ Taal I think was my first experience with a very, very mainstream director. And a very mainstream film, and obviously Subhash himself was called a showman. At that time, you know, he was very big, so this was probably the peak of his career, so it was a very mainstream thing.”
Initially Mita said no to Taal. “Initially I thought, this is not a lead role, so why should I do it? Then I was given a lot of advice. A lot of advice, do something new. It is good to be in a mainstream film. Yes, it is a different role. I remember when Subhashji started narrating to me the role in his own way with great interest; that my character is divorced and there is this child, and so and so. I listened to him for a while, then I interrupted him. I said, ‘Sorry, do you mind if I ask you a question, are you giving me a history of the character or the role? You are telling me what will actually appear on screen.’ So he was very shocked. He said nobody has asked me such a question. So I replied, ‘Without all the fancy stuff, tell me what is the screen time for my role?’ He laughed a lot and then he started explaining the extent and import of the role. The interesting thing was that my look in Taal was similar to that of my character. During those days, my hair was short and the clothes that I wore, half of them in the film are my clothes, because he liked whatever I wore, he said, ‘Oh, keep this for Prabha.’”
About sharing screen space with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Mita didn’t have too many happy thoughts to share. “She was new at that time. Her Hum… Dil De Chuke Sanam had not released yet. Of course, everybody knew her. Her beauty was much appreciated and discussed. But she had not become such a big star. She knew that Taal was going to be a big film for her. And she was like a little girl who’s just come back from her Miss Universe, Miss World thing and all that. She liked to talk about herself, her life and a few things here and there.
I mean we did not have interaction, we did not talk between shots and scenes. But it was clearly a very different world. I was coming from a world of hard training for acting while a new era had begun in cinema in which models, Miss World and all these people had come into acting. And they were playing — majorly they were playing — the lead roles. We were from, I guess, very different worlds. You know, I had also been a judge at a Miss India that happened in Goa, so I had seen Aishwarya Rai a bit since then. She was a simple girl, simple and very… This much is true that in Taal we had to reshoot some scenes, which were with Aishwarya and me, in which both of us were in the same frame.
Initially I thought that maybe some of the acting was not done properly in my scene, so I asked them why are we reshooting, what’s the problem? At first Mr. Ghai didn’t say anything. Then he said, ‘What can I say, your presence is so strong that my Miss World gets nervous and I cannot keep both of you together in one frame. You have a very strong presence, you know, your camera presence is too strong and so I cannot have both of you in the same frame because your presence is eating up her presence, you know, so that.’ So we reshot some of those. Like I always say, every day is a learning experience.”
Also Read: Rajinikanth’s 50 Years On Screen – Thalaivar’s Family And Spiritual Bond With Mahavatar Babaji
