Actress Swastika Mukherjee talks about her Puja release ‘Tekka’ and her acting chops

I will be playing a mother in Tekka. This is probably the millionth time I am playing a mom on screen (laughs). It was around 2020-21 that Srijit first approached me with Tekka’s script and expressed his wish to cast me in the role of Ira. Back then, I wasn’t keen on playing a mom again. I wanted to play the role of Maya, (played by Rukmini) instead, since I had never played a cop till then. But then Covid-19 happened, and things got delayed. I had a massive surgery a year back — my uterus and ovaries were removed. I couldn’t exercise or run a lot and I didn’t want the exhaustion to show on my face. I had also already played a cop in the series Nikhoj. Hence, when Srijit came back again and insisted that no one could play Ira better than me, I agreed.

I really don’t try hard to prepare for any role. There’s no graph in my mind --- I’m very spontaneous and intuitive. The point from where you will see Ira, the tsunami has already hit her since her daughter is already taken hostage. So, I had to feel the distraught mother who could do anything to get her daughter back. I used to put myself in Ira’s shoes on the sets and my own maternal instincts would come into play. At times I would get very reactive and Srijit would calm me down saying I have to play the part and not myself.

Rukmini is a very hard-working actress. She was always paranoid about her lines and wanted to learn her dialogues perfectly. I gave her a lot of tips like how one can use certain tricks to emote and also advised her to learn five Bengali sentences every day. She took it so seriously that during Tekka’s promotions, she was speaking in Bengali more than all of us put together (laughs). She's a great co-actor.

I never felt this gap because we were always in touch and he kept me in loop about work and would send scripts to me for feedback even if I weren’t acting in those films. He is a fabulous director, who knows what he wants from his actors and would achieve that no matter what. I love how he makes larger-than-life films despite the budget constraints in Bengali films.

Even in Tekka, he managed to capture the hostage scene on celluloid with such aplomb, communicating through walkie-talkies with four DOPs ensconced in four different high-rises, and wrapped it all up in 3-4 hours. Also, his scripts have such amazing dialogues that you can take away and keep forever, using them in different contexts.

In his personal space Srijit is like a bohemian or a vagabond. I don’t think he is dependable in a personal way and I can tell this because, of course, I have history with him. He is not very responsible and you can’t really depend on him for your life, maybe in bits and parts but not always.

There are a few Hindi projects that I did last year including Dead Dead Full Dead, an indie film where I play a woman who was murdered and who helped in her own investigation. There’s also Anya Data and Section 84. In Bengali I have the second season of Nikhoj coming up, and there are a couple of films including Durgapur Junction, and Promoter Boudi, where I play a female promoter.

I love breaking fashion stereotypes and mixing and matching things. I love nose pins of all kinds, and now that I pierced the other side of my nose too, I can’t have enough of them. For me, comfort is of utmost importance and I would never wear something, no matter how beautiful, if it’s pricking me. That’s the reason why I avoid sequins despite loving them. I also like earrings and I have a never-ending love for glass bangles -- I literally have a truckload of them.