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Shabana screams at plants
Shabana Azmi talks to plants and ghosts in a new, international TV film.
The versatile Shabana Azmi has completed another international assignment, Bangla Town Banquet, in which she plays a London- based Bangladeshi woman who interacts with plants and ghosts.
Shabana told IANS: "Bangla Town Banquet is written by Tanika Gupta who wrote the play Waiting Room, which I performed at the National Theatre in London and was directed by a r-e-a-l-l-y bright and talented woman, Hettie Macdonald.
"I am the film's protagonist. I play a Bangladeshi woman, Sufiya, living in East London who has two sons. Priya Kalidas of Bombay Dreams plays my daughter. I play a strange kind of woman with a fetish for growing kaddoo in my small balcony.
"My character talks to and screams at her plants. Very quirky kind of character. Then her husband brings home a second wife, a woman who is younger than our daughter. The daughter is hopping mad. But Sufiya is calm. On a day trip with two friends she discovers the courage to walk out of the bad marriage."
It sounds like all those deserted-wife neo-classics like Arth and Yeh Kaisa Insaaf she did in Bollywood 25 years ago.
"Not at all! It's not so much a film on marital issues as a buddy film about female bonding. What's lovely is that my character interacts with a ghost who comes and moves my character's soul in unexpected ways."
She stops and sighs, "I'm very happy with this film."
