Shabana Azmi looks forward to Raksha Bandhan like a dutiful sister.
"Raksha Bandhan is the tyohaar my brother Baba and I are most sentimental about," she tells Subhash K Jha.
"The thread I tie to him remains on his wrist till the next year when I tie a fresh one. He allows only his daughter Meghna to tie it, if I'm not in town.”
Tinseltown is notorious for making bhai-bahen out of all and sundry but not Baba.
"He has never allowed anyone else to become his 'rakhi sister'. Ours has been a very close bond and I love him deeply. He is the son I never had," Shabana says.
The actor Shabana not only dotes on Baba as a sister but also admires his cinematographic skills.
"As a Director Of Photography, he values actors so much that if he feels an actor has given an extremely emotional shot but his frame or his lighting is left wanting, he will sacrifice it for the sake of the actor. That's an amazing quality in a cinematographer.”
Illustrating Baba's wacky sense of humour, Shabana says, “Actors are vain creatures and most have a preference for certain angles and profiles. Baba doesn't try to convince them otherwise. 'Bhai, they've spent so many hours studying their faces that it's simpler to accept it and move on,' he says with a twinkle in his eye."
Shabana admits Baba films her beautifully but there is someone who does it better: "Baba photographs me very flatteringly, second only to Pravin Bhatt who shot me films like Arth, Kamala and Bhavna.”
