Aditi Rao Hydari has been mesmerising me with her talent, her beauty and her voice for so many years now, and no matter how much I see of her on screen, it just never feels enough. As today marks International Women’s Day and we celebrate the women all around us, Aditi’s filmography comes to my mind as she has always taken steps to reinvent the female characters on screen. In just the last year alone, she was a part of three Hindi films that showed three different sides of a women.
As I get to converse with her about that, I mention that with The Girl On The Train, she showed a mysterious side, with Geeli Pucchi she showed her shy and playful aspect while in Sardar Ka Grandson, she was this confident woman even in the setting of the partition. This year as well, she has started with the portrayal of a modern woman in Hey Sinamika that is being loved all over. As I ask her how does it feel to be the face of different aspects of female personality on screen, she shares her thoughts on it.
She says,
“As a woman I always feel that we have certain dreams and we want certain things for ourselves. I think it is really important that whether it happens subconsciously or done as a conscious decision, we want to see a change in how girls are looked at in cinema and you have to demand that change. The day that you start choosing that change, that day it will begin slowly.”
Aditi adds,
“Films are entertainment but they are also a reflection of society and influence it in a certain way. So, I think it is important that in all the fun and games, one thing we should never forget is that girls are also people. They are not just cardboard cutouts or manufactured just as objects of desires. They are flesh and blood people, they have feelings, agency, they choose for themselves and they demand change. They are masters of their own destiny and we want to see girls like that on screen. That is why, I guess, people are writing girls like that, and a lot of us, including me, are choosing parts like that.”
Whenever Aditi has appeared on screen, she has stolen my heart away. She has been the face of so many different personality traits of a woman on screen, proving how multi-faceted women in real life actually are. She still makes sure to establish that fact with each role of hers and that is what makes me connect with her more, making her one of the best from our generation.