Her mother’s daughter

I once came home from school and mom was mumbling under her breath reading a script I asked her what she was doing and she said lsquoone needs to spend some me time with the character When one does that the character opens up and speaks to yoursquordquo says actor Amruta Subhash while recalling a memory from her childhood It has now become her goto mantra when prepping for a roleWe are sitting with the Bombay Begum actress and her theatre veteran mother Jyoti who you will remember as the grandmother in Gully Boy at their Kala Nagar home Subhashrsquos Filmfare trophies and press cuttings adorn the study tablePicRane AshishThe motherdaughter are in sync Subhash recently put up a video on social media celebrating her motherrsquos 75th birthday expressing awe at her ldquowaterfallrdquo energy ldquoMy mother was at NSD National School of Drama and one of her batchmates was Naseeruddin Shah who was also my teacher Later I was course mates with Heeba Shahrsquos daughter We would always share notes about how our parents were so accomplished and what would we need to do to match up Even now when Naseer sir meets me he says lsquoYa I know you got an award for that show but then are you doing theatrersquordquoThat question perhaps did the trick Subash now along with working on two OTT shows is returning to theatre with Firse Honeymoon The play written and directed by her husband Sandesh Kulkarni who played Ganesh Gaitondersquos father in Sacred Games is a relationship story ldquoItrsquos every couplersquos story What happens when the spark burns out Itrsquos about a couple revisiting the scene of their honeymoon 12 years laterrdquoSubhash won Filfmare awards for her roles in Gully Boy and Bombay BegumsGrowing up theatre was all around her Thanks to her mum she was surrounded by theatrewalas like Satyadev Dubey and Shriram Lagoo Jyoti recalls ldquoAt NSD we did folk plays from all over the country but we were also exposed to German French and Russian plays Artistes from those countries would come down and work with us I remember acting with Naseer in Eugegravene Ionescorsquos The Lessonrdquo The septuagenarian has just finished shooting for a small part in Rajkumar Hiranirsquos Dunki which stars Shah Rukh Khan ldquoMy memory doesnrsquot serve me well so doing larger parts is harder for merdquo she confesses Amruta adds ldquoWhen mom met SRK she told him that she had met his father who used to run the canteen at NSD He leaned and lowered his forehead so that she could kiss himrdquoThe mother and daughter seem content with where they are in life and it reflects in their energy and beaming faces ldquoAt 75 I have realised that nothing is constant But some things remain the same As far as art is concerned or human expression is concerned or valuation of each expression is concerned that stays the same So is our idea of good and bad One is always striving to be better and that struggle happens with actors all the timerdquoJyoti Subhash in a still from Ghost StoriesAmruta admits that there is lot to learn from her mother She remembers attending the rehearsals of Girish Karnadrsquos Tughlaq where Jyoti played the evil stepmother ldquoI used to think lsquoat home mum is so sweet making bakhri for us and on stage she is screamingrsquo What happens to her I knew then that I wanted to learn everything about this process of being able to transform oneselfrdquoBut the most important lesson that Amruta says she has learnt from her mother is to remember that the core of an artiste is about performing ldquoItrsquos not about seeking validation from how many people are watching the show My mum comes from the tradition of Rashtriya Seva Dal a grassrootsfront organisation of the Indian National Congress They inculcated some values in my mum which she inculcated in me Everything is not about money everything is not about being famousmdashthe core is what you are getting out of it and finding out what makes you happy Thanks to my mother and Naseer sirrsquos prodding I keep going back to theatre which gives me that happinessrdquo