"I love gardening. My garden
is my passion. I don't have one here, but I have a huge one in
Pataudi. I like growing things there. I also spend my time doing
things for NGOs, I'm the goodwill ambassador for Unicef, etc,"
said Sharmila, who is married to former cricketer Mansur Ali Khan
Pataudi and whose son is the actor Saif Ali Khan.
"We have houses in Pataudi and Bhopal; so
I keep busy looking after them...If nothing else, taking care
of the road outside. Basically, I don't want to work in usual
roles any more. I want a definite break," said Sharmila,
who was last seen in "Morning Walk".
The actress might be wanting a break, but she
is now in the midst of promoting her first ever Marathi venture
"Samaantar", produced by yesteryears actor Amol Palekar
and distributed by Big Pictures. It is set to release Sep 4.
Sharmila plays a middle-aged recluse who comes
across her old flame Keshav (Amol), a 60-year-old man who gets
so embroiled in the humdrum of life that he has nothing to look
forward to on his personal front.
"My character Shama looks like a wounded
deer, but she is very creative, makes pottery, plays the violin,
she is extremely engaged with life instead of running away from
life," she explained.
She admits she was nervous when she took up the
role in the film simply because she wasn't familiar with the language.
"I was very nervous about the language.
Marathi is a very rich language and I have read a lot of Marathi
stories translated into Hindi or Bengali. Their literature is
rich like Bengali and Malayalam. I was really nervous. But my
friends in the Marathi industry like Mohan Agashe and Jabbar Patel
assured me it was light.
"While working on the film, I didn't have
any problems as I used to take the dialogues before. But then
there were few dialogues for my role. Otherwise I wouldn't have
been able to do it. Because I don't believe you can pick up a
language so fast," she said.
It is after 30 years that she has teamed up with
Amol and says it was a pleasure working with him and that his
style of filmmaking suits her temperament. The last time they
shared screen space was for a Bengali film "Mother".
After "Samaantar", Sharmila has just
one more movie titled "Life Goes On" - a bilingual movie
by debut director Sangeeta Dutta. In this one too she features
with veterans like Girish Karnad and Om Puri.
"Then I will be on a total break,"
she said. |