The Vidya Balan Interview

In November 2010, she descended onto FHM creating one of the most iconic images of our times, but the intervening 17 months have been hectic – for both of us. We were swatting off a neurotic covergirl with legal papers, Miss Balan meanwhile snuck out and delivered The Dirty Picture and went from being a sex symbol to inhabiting the space between wanton sex goddess and pin-up star. In short – Miss Balan has arrived.

She’s now doing 43 interviews a day and a “one hour voice chat” for a channel in Bangladesh (she adds); is on a flight every alternate day and has emerged as the female equivalent to Salman Khan. We ask her if she’s ushered in from a separate entrance directly out to the runway and she laughs. She doesn’t, but she’s heard they use the entrance to usher in Bachchan.

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At some deluded level we at FHM believe we had a hand to play in her super sex icon status and considering the all-round great gal she is, she let’s us live with that delusion. But between it all, Miss Balan, who stands out in a crowd of contemporaries with flashboard abs is also a little bit of a liar, or a dreamer – we aren’t too sure yet. Last time we met her she wanted to learn to paraglide, go whitewater rafting, attend a pottery workshop, and learn how to ride a horse and a bike. This cover in fact was supposed to have her posing and pouting as a biker chick. But the only thing she wants to do now is to be left alone in a room. “I haven’t had time to breathe,” she explains. “I haven’t read anything in two years and apart from a short vacation to New Zealand, I haven’t traveled.”

What has changed? At 34, Miss Balan suddenly finds herself at the top. The 2012 calendar is chock-a-block. Kahaani (first rumoured to be a spin off on Kill Bill) is out this month, she’s replaced Chitrangada Singh in a Sudhir Mishra movie and in a case of real life imitating reel, has been called upon to do an item number to make a movie work just like her cinematic alter-ego Silk. What did surprise Balan though was the response to the movie. “It was loved by people in the back 40 rows, not just the front four,” and that’s where the Salman comparisons make sense.

“Many people told me they respected me too much to go see me in The Dirty Picture, but they did and then said they respected me even more.” People around her have changed too, she talks fondly of the time when she was criticised for everything from her clothes to her weight to her pairing with Shahid Kapoor in Kismat Konnection. She talks about massive designers who refused to look at her while dressing her and how that one madame designer has now made her move, “But I won’t work with her now. I can’t work with people who don’t respect me.”

Ask her about the new ‘Super Sex Symbol League’ she has co-founded and now inhabits solo and she laughs. “When we were making this movie, Milan told me I would be the pin-up for every boy in India,” but she wasn’t too sure how much of it would come true. “Indian women are damn hot. They have the curves, dark eyes and long dark hair… Unfortunately, we’ve been too busy aping the west’s idea of a perfect body type.” “It’s been a while since we have been accepting of a woman with a bigger frame.” “As far as I’m concerned, I am sexiest at my fattest best,” she laughs.

She has every reason to be pleased – at the Kala Ghoda arts festival in Mumbai recently, Silk made an appearance among world musicians, snooty wine tasters and art deco chat because when Cadbury’s released a new chocolate called Silk, the larger consensus was to have her endorse it. Somewhere, the Silk she embodied has managed to become a part of popular kitsch culture like the cycle-rickshaw or cutting chai. “Silk might just be an icon of the quintessential Indian woman,” she laughs. She is right. It’s indeed become cool to be Indian again. “We abuse, we drink, but we do pujas too. Our families are close yet extra marital affairs happen – it’s all true and it’s what makes us Indians.”

The other thing that has also changed in the last year and a half is that Miss Balan has a new gentleman caller; something she’d rather not talk about. “All I’d say is that only when you have someone stable in your life can you completely blossom.” Truth be told, we’re not too keen on pestering her for more information, as her being in a stable relationship is more than we can take.

We ask her what her plans are now, does she want to get back to the to-do list we’d scribbled in November 2010 (she’s added Urdu to it now), she’ll think about it, she says. Right now she just wants to read and sleep for two weeks, then she’ll plan her vacation, but she still can’t say whether it will be with the gentleman caller or alone. Tragically for her, the plan is too ambitious – she’s an insomniac, plus Bollywood seems in no mood to grant her a sabbatical just yet. It’s gotten worse with the work stress, but it’s the travel she hates – “I can’t do the two flights a day routine, it’s getting to me”.

This fame also hasn’t come without its fair share of drama. Miss Balan had her very own stalker who had taken to turning up at her house and film sets, but he has since been arrested. We ask her if she’s been hit on, she insists she hasn’t. We don’t buy it. “People do come up to me and say they liked the movie and me in it, but no one has crossed the line.” We have a couple of things we’d like to say to her, but we’d rather scribble it on her poster over the headboard – just like you.

From the March 2012 issue of FHM India.