‘I lost the love game’

The iconic film Aashiqui recently completed 25 years. The film’s leading lady Anu Aggarwal became a star overnight in one of the most surprising chapters Bollywood had ever seen until then. She was in New York when the film had released. It was director Mahesh Bhatt who called to give her the good news, Anu tells us as she takes a trip down memory lane. Hers is the most unusual story as far as the film industry is concerned. At the peak of stardom, she simply chose to let it all go and set off in the opposite direction away from the glitzy world in a quest for inner peace. Her real life was a book waiting to happen and it finally did when Anu released her book, playfully titled Anusual chronicling the myriad chapters of her life.

She admits that her success affected her personal relationships back then. “Suddenly everything I did was ‘wow’. The same people who had shunned me raised me up. ‘Style Icon 1993— in spite of her dark skin Anu has made it’ — they said. It was also a time when my relationship ducked in a phase of gloom. Press acquisitions of the ‘thinking man’s sex symbol Anu’ and her (imagined) sexual conduct didn’t fare well with the private delicacy of a man-woman bonding. I lost the love game and was left defeated. Although, frankly I never got hooked to public adulation. I could never be arrogant about my stardom. My agent would say, ‘you are a deadly combination of charisma, charm, and appeal. The paparazzi chased me, fans stuck my posters on their bedroom walls. They linked me to the character Anu Varghese I played on screen,” she said.

Director Mahesh Bhatt who launched and mentored Anu, continues to have a special place in her life. He was even present at the launch of her book Anusual. Their relationship is one Anu would never put a label on, she says. “I was in NYC when the film released and I had got back the evening after. Mahesh’s voice rang in my ears —Anu, your movie is a hit! — A hit? My movie? And I’d fallen asleep that night in amazement, surprise, and a childlike curiosity about what it really meant. Suddenly everyone wanted a piece of me. Fans waited under the building for me to enter or leave. The white walls of the street outside were smeared with ‘Anu I love you’ in charcoal black.

Autos blared Aashiqui songs. Living alone became unmanageable. Protection and security were suddenly needed. Public transport doesn’t go hand in hand with a public persona, I discovered. I had loved the freedom public transport provided till then. Quick changes and adjustments were needed. I was blown away by the adulation. It was beautiful too. And with Mahesh there is a bonding I could never put a label on.”

She never had any illusions about herself. Anu was aware that she was not just a Bollywood heroine and she embraced the difference. She couldn’t be the coy Hindi film actress. She would freely voice her opinions even in the 90s. “Sheltered by the umbrella of fame I would endorse a condom, shout slogans of ‘safe sex’, to help population control in a country bursting at its seams with people. I launched music television in India, and would coo ‘Oye’ instead of a ‘namaste’. Far from being shunned in the early 1990s, even a condom endorsement would raise me to be a ‘style icon’. I now think it was the honesty I did it with that helped,” Anu says.

But fame was not all she wanted from life, as she went on to discover. “The ‘who am I’ question led me to shun the glitz and glory. I left my Jimmy Choos behind. In Victoria’s Secrets and Guccis started my renunciation — meagre needs and frugal wants. I took to yoga, dhyan, sanyas. Mental abuse, harsh living, humiliation became a part of everyday monkhood. I wouldn’t know when the next abuse would come, when I would be insulted in public — all this diluted the ego, the ‘I’. My film Erotica opened in Cannes, got rave reviews in New York Times and Variety. Funnily enough that was the time when I felt I was done.”

Writing a book on her life turned out to be a learning experience for her. Anu says “It taught me patience. I got to know a little and a lot more about me. Autobiographical story writing tests your honesty. After some deliberation I decided to be totally true to the reader. It was a journey in self-contemplation. It brings out a lot of junk stored in the backyard of the brain. Self-examination leads to self discovery.”

And what about spirituality? Anu continues, “Spirituality for me has been a mind-mapping experience. It puts to test everything you think is ‘normal’. Living out of a bag with three pieces of clothing and forget, owning a house (my sea-facing house in Mumbai lies locked up currently), you don’t have a room, or a bed even. The near-death experience was unexpected as the biggest challenge in life is. Acute trauma, immense pain, and my body beaten till it was pulped down led me to understand the real truth, of life — I am not the body. When nothing of ‘me’ was left, I was love.”