How lovely Shraddha became menacing Haseena!

Last evening, @ApoorvaLakhia showed me #HaseenaParkarTeaser – the teaser of his August release ‘Haseena Parkar’ on a gigantic TV screen in his JVPD Scheme home. I like the Bollywood director best for his gangster film ‘Shootout at Lokhandwala’. Crime genres fascinate him. His bookshelf was crammed with crime fiction by the world’s biggest authors. I had read most of them. My respect for him shot up a notch. ‘Haseena Parkar’ is a gritty biopic of a thriller. The subject is Dawood Ibrahim’s sister who notoriously ran his crime syndicate right under the nose of the Mumbai Police from Gordon Hall in Nagpada. She was until her death in July 2014, the alleged Godmother of the Muslim underworld, involved in every business in the area, drawing a cut out of all shady transactions. I don’t know how like Dawood himself Haseena survived this deadly game because most of the D Company was decimated in bloody shootouts, killed by rival gangsters or the encounter specialists of the Mumbai Police. Among them Haseena’s husband Ismail Parkar who was gunned down before her by the Arun Gawli gang. But while Dawood remained in hiding, she ran her empire from her home, sitting imperiously in a darbar and choosing who to help and who to perhaps kill. Sitting by my side at Lakhia’s home watching herself in the teaser was the film’s central character, the lovely actress @ShraddhaKapoor. I was meeting her for the first time. And was glad to see that Shraddha is nothing like her villainous father Shakti Kapoor who was Bollywood’s principal baddie until directors decided that comedy suited him better. She is awfully cute. Also soft-spoken. And she has a genuinely dazzling smile, a body that was as breathtaking in snug jeans and a tee beside me as it is under a voluminous burkha on the screen, and a fresh-faced niceness and appeal although she’s been in Bollywood since 2010 and done a dozen films. Shraddha sat with her fingers crossed. Like a nervous HSC student waiting for her board exam results. I wondered why, because from what little Lakhia showed me, the young actress, Shraddha has done an outstanding job of getting into the skin of this shadowy criminal character. Haseena was not a dacoit galloping through the ravines of the Chambal Valley gunning down people. Which might have been easy for a Bollywood director to showcase. She conveyed her menace gently. With killer kohl-eyed expressions and threatening paan-stained smiles. She combined irony, satire, and sarcasm with good old-fashioned Muslim courtesy. Shraddha never herself met Haseena. So getting the character right must have been challenging. But Shraddha got a feel for the role by disguising herself in a burkha and frequently roaming the streets of Nagpada to see how the alleged mafia queen lived and operated. I liked her immensely. Catch #HaseenaParkarTeaser later this afternoon and you will understand why.