It’s difficult to believe it is the same person. It’s only been two years since Neena came out and everyone who watched it talked plenty of the new heroine it brought — short hair, model-like, playing a drunk girl, rare in a Malayalam movie.
In two years, the hair grew, the girl came back prettier, looking the exact opposite of what she had portrayed back then — a tomboy. Model-actor Deepti Sati had deliberately avoided characters that were replicas of Neena. She went to do a Kannada-Telugu bilingual in between and when she walked back to Malayalam, came with three movies — Pullikkaran Staraa, Solo and Lavakusha.
“I wanted to do something different. And then I got all the movies together and I was shooting for all of them. That’s why it took so long to come back,” Deepti says on a phone call, while she is travelling in the night. The days would be full of promo events, so night is when she can spare some time. The conversation is nothing like an interview. Deepti talks casually, easily, without reluctance, without measuring the words she has to say.
She laughs when she talks of ‘Innocent uncle’ and his many jokes in the sets of Pullikkaran Staraa, where she met Mammootty for the first time. “I definitely was very nervous and very scared. I have heard so much about him. Mammukka, Lalettan, Amitabh Bachchan... these are people you wish to work with at least once in your life,” she says.
Everyone helped her — the superstar himself and Asha Sharath, playing another main character in the film. And the fun came with Innocent uncle trying to speak to her in Hindi and pulling her leg.
Deepti plays Manjima, a simple and happy girly girl born and raised in Kochi, the opposite of Neena. “Manjima gets involved in the lives of the main
characters — Mammukka’s Rajakumaran, included. Then there is Asha ma’am, who has also been really helpful, and I admire her dance. I love dancing," she says.
She is trained in Kathak and Bharatanatyam, and practises whenever she can in Mumbai. That’s where she is based and has been all her life. Her dad is from Nainital and mom from Kerala.
It had all been very new for her when she first came for Neena. Now she knows people, she has friends. Like Dulquer Salmaan. It is to Dulquer and his Solo that Deepti went to from Pullikkaran. From dad to son. But Deepti never looked for bits of Mammootty in Dulquer or the other way around.
“I looked at them as different entities. One thing that is common among them is they are both very disciplined. With Mammootty sir, I was nervous, he is a very senior actor. Dulquer was like a chilled out buddy. I asked them both many questions. I remember asking Dulquer how he started his career and how he chooses his movies. He’d answer them all sweetly,” she says.
In Solo, she plays an army cadet in one of the segments. The film is made of four different short stories, with only Dulquer being the common factor. “Every short story is about an element, like fire, water, wind and earth. I come in earth. I play a character that’s something like Anushka Sharma’s in Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” she explains.
Deepti most enjoyed the bike rides in Solo, with all of them going up and down the hills of Lonavala in Mumbai. She could ride too, but she didn’t in this one. “It was a little scary, it was the rainy season. And we didn’t have time. And you know, Dulquer is like a huge bike fan. It was fun. But he was more scared for me ‘cause I was the only girl.”
With three back-to-back Malayalam films, Deepti has become much more comfortable with the language. She has even dubbed for Solo, in Tamil and Malayalam, it being a bilingual. Nice, for the voice that comes through the many disturbances of a trafficky road is sweet and Deepti admits she loves to sing too.
All three different characters, she hopes will bring a different image to her.
People still call her ‘Neena’ and she had thoroughly enjoyed being Neena. But she wishes for acceptance of who she is.
