Suman on the run

More than two decades ago, she enthralled audiences with her performance in Nishkarsha and teased film buffs as Beladingale Bale where her pretty face wasn’t shown throughout the movie. Actress Suman Nagarkar may have moved to the US a decade-and-a-half ago, but her undying love for her family and films keeps bringing her back to namooru. We caught up with the actress, who got talking about being an avid marathon runner and more…

Tell Suman that she looks as gorgeous as ever and she can’t help but break into a smile. Now based at Folsom in California, the actress reveals that she keeps visiting Bengaluru often. “I’m here till the end of the month. We recently did a short film in the US called Grey — it’s about piracy and how it affects the film industry. It’s a Kannada project with English subtitles and was released on YouTube,” she says.

Interestingly, what keeps Suman busy most of the time is her love for running, which was sparked off in 2007. “That’s when my husband Gurudev and I started to run. I took up a boot camp fitness class in a local community college and everything there was about running — from warm up to cool down. They made the class run a mile, and that was like a marathon for me. I was the last one to finish and people there cheered me — that really inspired me.” Soon, Suman and her better half began training and in three months, they finished a half marathon, where they ran a distance of 21.1 km. “It’s like a bug, once it catches you, it never leaves! Sometimes, we go crazy and each weekend, we run a marathon or a half at different places,” says the actress, who’s done 50 half marathons and 15 full ones till date. She also recently ran the 25k Ultra Marathon in Bengaluru, not just with her husband, but also with her 72-year-old mom who’s an ardent runner! “My mom runs in a saree. She usually brisk walks and in between, runs a bit,” shares Suman.

Back home in Folsom, the actress used to teach Hindustani music to kids and adults, but with her travel getting more regular, she had to stop taking classes. With parents living in Bengaluru, she’s a regular visitor to the city she misses immensely. “The city has changed so much now — I really cannot connect to the place some times. People here hardly talk in Kannada. Even if you go to a restaurant in areas like Gandhi Bazaar or Jayanagar, which were considered the heart of Bengaluru, there are hardly any people talking in Kannada. That is sad. We should learn and love other languages, but people who move here should also learn Kannada,” she states.

As for Kannada cinema, Suman is quite impressed with the current crop of films. “New filmmakers are making out-of-the-box films which don’t follow the typical formula of song, dance and fight. I liked recent movies like Shuddhi, Urvi and Ayana.” When it comes to projects she’d like to do, Suman is looking for independent roles which have scope for performance. “I don’t want to play the hero or heroine’s mother unless that is the main character, but that doesn’t happen!” she says.