My buddy Tanvi

Wanted to read this out at my book launch in Pune where she came to read, but it was not the time and place (after all, that was all about ME ME ME and ZM ZM ZM). So here it is. Those of you who dont know her, get to know her a little here; those of you who like her already, like her some more, now. This first appeared in a magazine called Man's World (page: Company of Women).
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"Isn't that Tanvi Azmi?"
When I tell Tanvi that Man's World wants to feature her in their July issue - and can she please stop wandering around and sit down in one place and talk to me - she pulls a panic face. When I tell her they're sending someone to photograph her, she groans something like "Mummy" and buries her head in a cushion. Then she busies herself with a 3000-piece jig-saw spread out in front of us. It's a black-and-white Escher illustration - Tanvi's favourite kind of challenge. "A real sadist has thought up this jig-saw," she mutters happily as we pore over our two separate corners.

She looks up briefly at me and mumbles: "Write na whatever you can think of."

I can think of heaps.

Tanvi and I have spent the last 15 years talking non-stop, laughing recklessly, eating too much, observing mercilessly, arguing gently, crossword solving furiously, weeping occasionally, ranting full-throatedly, and exchanging the deepest of secrets - to the exclusion of anyone else - husbands, etc too. A tarot reader recently declared us soul-sisters. We didn't need her to tell us that. We kind of suspected it the day we met in a tiny laundry in Juhu, circa 1987.

Say Tanvi's name out loud, and most people, men and women, will light up and say - hey what happened to her - why don’t we see more of her. In the eighties she made waves playing a young widow in Vijaya Mehta's Raosaheb; she was much loved by 9 o'clock TV audiences as Dr Madhuri in Lifeline and as Ghalib's wife opposite Naseeruddin Shah. Several small but significant roles in films followed. More recently she's been the sweet-funny woman with three improbably hulking kids in the TV serial Family No.1. The ultimate compliment from audiences: There are suddenly a whole lot of little girls named Tanvi in the world.

Even for films that bombed, audiences and critics have always had something good to say about her - and often they'll say: what was she doing in a film like that. What indeed. Here then, possibly, is Tanvi's fatal flaw: an exasperating lack of ambition; an inability-unwillingness to move in for the kill. There's been a long phase when she's taken the path of least resistance - avoiding out and out duds, but taking up many roles by default. I'm tempted to say she has also indulged in a Garbo-like evasion of the Press - but she'll just guffaw at the comparison.

Whether she likes it or not, Tanvi's in the news again. She's just back from a frantically-paced shoot of a Mira Nair film in which she plays the mother of an American-Muslim boy who disappears on 9/11. Mira Nair has gone on record to say that Tanvi is a hugely talented actor who submits to the director without a trace of any ego or vanity. Typically, she has returned from the shoot without a single picture of herself - not a still or a polaroid, when 100s of pictures were generated every day. Her cinematographer husband Baba Azmi, just smiles at this, not surprised at all. I want to whopp her on the head, though. Why, damn it, I ask her. She tries to get away with "I hate going around saying 'hey look look'. Finally it's my work that should speak…." You're a pathological underplayer, I say.

She can't help it; she's got it from both sides of the family. Her mother Usha Kiron, once a reigning star of Hindi and Marathi films, is known to have lent a helping hand even in the costume department on the sets of a film in which she was the heroine! As Usha Kiron says in her autobiography: "It just did not occur to me to make a fuss on the sets. The work had to get done, that's all there was to it."

Tanvi's father, Dr. Manohar Kher, once Dean of Sion Hospital and a quiet, tireless social worker, routinely deflects any attempt to honour him or his work. The dapper, handsome 'man in white' will simply give you an inscrutable smile if you try to draw him out. Tanvi's brother Adwait Kher, a man of many parts - restauranteur, model, athlete, antique collector, music buff - is happiest puttering around the old bazaars of Nashik. The only big noise that the extended family of professionals makes is when they get together to play Pictionary. Then all hell breaks loose. That's when no one's modest, quiet or reserved. It usually ends in pistols at dawn.

The phone rings and Tanvi's reminded that she has work to do. "I just havetohaveto watch this by this evening," she says - and we settle down to watch Bergman's Autumn Sonata. A Mumbai stage director hopes to cast her in an English stage version of the film. How we watch the film is completely representative of how we are. We are both deeply affected and depressed by the film and its performances and especially its ending. Both of us hear huge echoes within. However, from the first or second frame, Tanvi reaches out for her box of tissues, the tears pouring, face a deep red, sniffing hugely. As for me, not a tear manifests itself - a Siberian winter sets into my body. When it's over we call up for some ice cream - the only logical thing to do.

Tanvi has always been extremely chary of doing theatre. Her favourite imitation of herself is one of her scenes in the Marathi play Purush. She was meant to stride on to stage, point accusingly at the villain and shout threateningly: "Gulabrao!" The way she tells it, she shuffled in on knocking knees, broke out into a cold sweat and put out a shaking hand that promptly locked in the accusing gesture and refused to unlock. Along with this, her tongue went dry and defiant and refused to say 'Gulabrao'…it came out something like "Wuaabaaow"!

But none of this is in evidence when she's shooting for a film. On the sets she is focused, absorbing, thinking and has the fantastic ability to watch herself from the outside - a director's delight. Most film units - cast and crew - fall a little in love with her. She is never in prima donna mode and makes friends easily up and down the hierarchy. Several years ago, shooting in South India, an elegant producer-director team took a terribly dim view of her wandering off on a girls' outing to buy glass bangles and chappals with a "mere third assistant director for godsake." Of course, the third AD and Tanvi continue to be great friends. The cast and crew of Mira Nair's film too, going by the hugely affectionate things they have scrawled on a book that they gifted her - fell in love a lot.

On Nair's shoot in May she had several whammies to deal with. Her father-in-law, Kaifi Azmi, with whom she had an extremely loving relationship, had passed away the day before. She was running a temperature of a 103 degrees. She was jet-lagging. She knew it was a highly-concentrated 5-day shoot. She was more-than-aware that the world would soon watch this performance. Her character was a woman knotted in grief and hope and anger. The family on whom the story is based was present on the sets. Tanvi was constantly aware that she was playing out emotions that they actually go through every day of their lives. For a completely non-manipulative person and actor, that's a huge onus.

The only time Tanvi's been "so clever" - as her sister-in-law Shabana Azmi likes to point out - is in a photo that's from 1969. There's Lata Mangeshkar looking indulgently at her - and there's Tanvi, who's rearranged her smile ever so neatly, to cover up the fact that there are two front teeth missing. (Tanvi and Shabana share a relationship that ranges from messing around in the kitchen to singing Faiz together - rather well, at that.)

Back in Mumbai, Tanvi indulges in her favourite pastime of ducking the Press; she simply rolls up her sleeves and gets on with life. My theory - that most beautiful women are languidly used to having the world attend upon them - has suffered a dent since I met her. If there's no able-bodied watchman to do it, I have seen her routinely do things like hoist a 20 litre can of mineral water off the ground, turn it over in mid-air and place it deftly over its dispenser. At such times I gape. And she grins: "I'm very strong, ya."

Tanvi, most incongruously, weeps while watching films like Abyss or Cliffhanger - while I laugh, scoff, yawn. But for weeks she sat by the dying Kaifi Azmi's bedside and kept up the chatter and the smiles, keeping the tears firmly at bay. She'd hold his frail old hand and they'd mock arm-wrestle with each other. And she'd let him win. She's very strong, ya.
c. Gouri Dange


Filmography:

Films
Pyari Behena; Bapu
Raosaheb; Vijaya Mehta
Tera Naam Mera Naam; Ramesh Talwar
Darr; Yash Chopra
Akele Hum Akele Tum; Mansoor Khan
Dushman; Tanuja Chandra
Rajo Ko Rani Sey Pyar Ho Gaya; Rajiv Kumar
Mela; Dharmesh Darshan
Dhai Akshar Prem Kay; Raj Kanwar
Vidheyan; Adoor Gopalkrishnan
English, August; Dev Benegal
Saatwan Aasmaan; Mahesh Bhatt
Aks; Rakesh Mehra

TV Serials
Lifeline; Vijaya Mehta
Mirza Ghalib; Gulzar
Lohit Kinare; Kalpana Lajmi
Zameen Aasman; Tanjua Chandra
Satya-wa-ti; Prathamesh Sawant
Family No 1; Sameer Kulkarni