Swara Bhasker: ‘Ever since my love life went to the dogs, I’ve discovered how precious my girlfriends are’

Swara Bhasker is back with yet another film about four female friends at the forefront. However, the tw this time on is that these women are not urban south Delhi girls like they were in Veere Di Wedding; they are relatable middle-class women in Jahaan Chaar Yaar.
In this interview with , Swara talks about choosing characters that allow her to embrace her vulnerabilities, and how she values her girlfriends more after her “love life went to the dogs”.

Swara has done a number of challenging roles in her life but she she believes that playing a middle-class housewife was demanding for her because it was far from how she is perceived people. “I took up the role because it was a challenge. Of course you have to work on your body language, the vocabulary. I asked for this role because I loved it so much, I wanted the challenge, she is so different from all the work I’ve done but also my public persona is a bit of a warrior and rebel, so she’s like that too. I really enjoyed it and channeled my grandmother who I was very close to, who I love. I remembered all her stories from her early life as a young bride, her early life, and I channeled all that in.
Swara also shares how it was a fun to shoot with the largely female cast as there was no “mansplaining”. She says, “I really enjoyed the company of all the girls, women on the set. The whole vibe was that there is a certain ease that I’ve begun to notice that you just have when you’re hanging with girls, like they just get you. The problems and all are often similar and even if they are not similar, they just get you, and then there is no mansplaining… And ever since my love life went to the dogs, I’ve discovered how precious my girlfriends are. I value them more than ever. And the more I love my girlfriends, the more my love life continues to be in the gutter because I feel ‘iski koi zaroorat hi nahi hai’. The strongest point of the film is the camaraderie between the four girls.”

This is not the first time Swara will be seen in a film on female friendships. She did Veere Di wedding along with Kareena Kapoor Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Shikha Talsania in 2018. Swara explains how Jahaan Chaar Yaar is different. She shares how one of her friends described the movie, “As one of my friends said, this is Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara soaked in rai ka tel (mustard oil).”
She further says, “If you judge a film their one-liners then there are only seven one-liners in the world. Every love story is going to have a similar one-liner, every friendship story will have a similar one-liner, same with father-son story, mother- daughter story, so on and so forth… Films are made screenplays, and this is a very original screenplay. Yes, there have been friendship stories, road-trip stories, but no film in mainstream Bollywood has cast four married, middle-class housewives from small-town background as their protagons. What is clutter-breaker about this film is that the people who are relegated as ‘behenjis’ and are made fun of, looked at in a derogatory way, this story fronts and centres them, they star in it and you discover how cool, badass and fun actually ‘behenjis’ are. I think it is wonderful that this story takes on the ‘behenji’ stereotype and flips it on its head, and serves it back to you in a way that you’ll be like ‘I love these girls, they’re so fun!’”

While 2022 has seen Gangubai Kathiawadi starring Alia Bhatt as one of its biggest hits, other female-led films like Dhaakad, Dobaaraa and Shabaash Mithu failing to work at the box office. They joined big-budget films such as Bachchhan Paanday, Samrat Prithviraj, Raksha Bandhan and Shamshera not being able to attract cinegoers to theatres. So, does box-office performance bog her down? On this, Swara says, “We started the year with Gangubai Kathiawadi! Also, what is the point of being scared? We can’t control it, you can’t control the box-office performance, that’s a gamble. The only thing you can control is the quality of the work you’re doing, the craft you’re bringing to the table, the story that you’re making. I think we’ve, everyone of us has done excellently in that, these are excellently performed (roles) and I hope audience see themselves in it, it is everyone’s story.”

The Nil Battey Sannata actor had recently said how she is tired of her “dabang” image that’s built up on Twitter because it gets her into “trouble unnecessarily”. Has this image has also affected her work? “Yeah! I’d say yes in capital! I’m not saying that your public image is what it is, I was just saying that as an actor, it is interesting for me to do something I haven’t done before. At times, I unconsciously ride along with that public image. So, this image of ‘Twitter- warrior’, ‘fiery person’ is always true. People who know me, know that I can be quite an idiot, and quite a doormat. You forget the other aspects about your own personality when you’re constantly trying to play to this image that is built.”