How strange is life? One minute you're attending Queens College and commuting by subway and the next you're a star in Bollywood films! This happened to Nisha Arora, an Indian-American who grew up in Queens and now lives in Hicksville, Long Island. She's landed an interesting role in the film Supari, which stars Nandita Das, Uday Chopra and Rahul Dev. It's produced by Padam Kumar, who made Champion earlier with Sunny Deol and Manisha Koirala.
So how did a NY girl get involved in Bombay cinema? Nisha, who hadn't been to India in 16 years, went to visit her sister, who's married to Padam Kumar. "I was always into fashion and liked the glamour line," recalls Nisha. "Cinema always intrigued me."
Within a month she had joined classes at the celebrated Kishore Namit Kapoor Acting Lab, where many of the actors of the new brigade have been trained, and found acting to be her cup of tea. "You won't believe it, I used to wake up every morning and say, 'Wow! Acting is therapeutic!' I found it really effortless, maybe as they say, acting is inborn, and I explored all these different horizons inside of me through this acting class."
After graduating, she acted in theater in ISKON, the main lead in a Hindi Punjabi play based on the riots in 1980: " It was to get rid of any leftover inhibitions I might have had. After all, you only get one take in theater, so if you can do theater, you can definitely do films."
All along she was helping with production on the sets of her brother-in-law's film Supari without any plans of being in the film. She says, "It seems as if everyone needs a godfather in Bollywood but that's not true. I did all my struggling myself. I was the last one to be added to the script so it definitely was not a home thing at all. Lots of people were auditioned for the role of Saraswati." The film has ten characters and Saraswati is one of the important ones. She is very Indian in her morality and in her ethics, but has a very Western approach to life. Says Nisha, "This character was evolving over the course of the year and I was told that I suited the role. I didn't even know Padam was considering me all this time in his head!"
The film is scheduled for a May release in India and the United States. For Nisha, Bollywood is definitely a part of her future. She laughs, " In fact, I didn't have those dreams when I was in New York. I was shell-shocked when I got to India. I had a culture shock myself! Now I say 'Wow, India's advanced!'"
Ye Hai Mohabbatein
CID
