On a cold January Kathmandu night, a 23-year-old could not sleep. She turned from one side to the other, tried not to think about her, but could not.
There was something inside her that wanted to come out. She woke up, and looked at the clock. It was 1 am. Suddenly tears started dripping down her eyes and there was no stopping them. She had never shed tears this way before.
Just a few months ago, Rojita Buddhacharya had agreed to play the lead role in a biopic on the celebrated writer Jhamak Ghimire, who was born with cerebral palsy.
After that night, I did not think it would be necessary to talk to my guru about how Jhamak didi feels in her body,” says Buddhacharya, who agreed to play Jhamak in the movie so that her story could inspire people to take up the struggles life has to offer.
“I was astonished to read her autobiography. Her courage and determination surprises me.”
Surprise is also a word that deeply resonates with the life of Buddhacharya. The decision of theatre actor, who recently graduated from the Theatre Village, to shave off her hair to play Tagore’s Malini was a shocker for her family. Buddhacharya, who spent hours watching Jhamak’s mannerisms on tape, took some time off to play Malini.
But she was so immersed in ‘Malini’ that she started thinking like her. “For Malini, beauty is only skin deep. What she would do with her hair was what I did with mine,” she remembers.
“For Malini, beauty is only skin deep. What she would do with her hair was what I did with mine.”
Anyone who knows her would say that for her, getting into any character she plays is the bare minimum standard she has set for herself. Perhaps this was the reason the makers of ‘Jiban Kada ki Phool (Is life flower or thorns?)‘ approached her to play the lead role in the movie.
It had all started two years ago when director Binod Bista and writer Mukti Upadhyaya had come to Theatre Village to talk to her about the movie. Buddhacharya, who had already accepted acting as her career, still remembers the day. “I said ‘yes’, without thinking about how I was going to prepare for the role, about which I only had a cursory reading.”
It was years ago that Buddhacharya had read the autobiography, without thinking too much about the prospect of ‘staging’ the story in the future. She looked for the book in her collection, and read it over and over again. After every sentence, she would ask herself, “Why did she choose that particular word, what was she thinking when she was writing this paragraph?”
She knew Rojita was not Jhamak, neither was Rojita a tabula rasa.
In addition to the book, which was her best source material, Buddhacharya spent hours rewinding, playing and again rewinding available footage of the author. But the videos could only help to a certain extent. She knew that Jhamak was a unique individual who had her own childhood, her own set of beliefs, and her own way of looking at the world. She also knew that Rojita was not Jhamak, neither was Rojita a tabula rasa.
The actor’s main challenge was to attempt to clean the slate of her beliefs and values, and to attempt to draw with ink, waves emanating from Jhamak’s brain on it. That was no easy thing to do.
Buddhacharya, as her friends know, is an introvert. Her friends say that during debates and discussions, she never has a strong opinion, and that she’d voice opposition is something unheard of. Perhaps, the loss of her mother in her early childhood molded her character that way.
She had already said yes, and there was no turning back.
Her first task was to gain two more kilos – Jhamak weighed 53 kg. Her second task was, however, not so straight forward. Her guru told her to kick an idol of Lord Ganesh, whom she worshiped, and slap her teacher, whom she venerated. It took her more than a month to accomplish these ‘tasks’.
The task then was to use her left toe, the way Jhamak does. She had to write with her big toe, and use it to do everything.
“Even before I could start holding things with my toe, I had a hard time moving my toe. I thought, I had to use my left hand a bit more so that I could activate the muscles on the left party of my body,” she remembers the days when she became a ‘leftie.’
During the ‘exercise’, there were days when she felt helpless, bound by constraints. But this had only made a few pages on Jhamak’s autobiography. Every time she was down, she’d remember Jhamak, and her determination, and that kept her going till the big day she was yearning for.
The big day came, and it brought along a smile on her face.
“J-H-A-M-A-K G-H-I-M-I-R-E” After days of futile practice, Buddhacharya wrote down her hero’s name on a piece of paper, a pen neatly held in her toe, the way people wear slippers. Then she moved on to trying to do other things with her toe.
Seven months into her training, her guru Bimal put in front of her an egg. “I ate it with my left toe.” Bimal’s road map was working.
When the training had begun, Buddhacharya wanted to attempt to do everything all at once. But Bimals’ plan was to make slow gradual progress. He was patient enough to wait for one-and-half years.
When the training had begun, Buddhacharya wanted to attempt to do everything all at once. But Bimals’ plan was to make slow gradual progress.
The other big day came when the Jhamak of the reel world met that of the real. “She was like an open book. She expresses herself quite well. There are many who say she is a bit moody, but I know she behaves with people the way they behave with her.”
Just before the shoot began, she spent a few weeks with Jhamak. It was clear that they were on the same wavelength. Buddhacharya desperately wanted a stamp of approval from Jhamak. but Jhamak would not give it to her so easily. During the early days, she told her, “Let’s see how things go.”
Then she switched to, “Give it a try.”
Finally, she said, “I hope you do it well !”
Although she had spent months taking on the challenge head-on, there was fear in the darkest corner of her mind, that Jhamak might reject her and everything would fall apart.
Jhamak’s home
She is writing something on a piece of paper. “Go get me a copy of Muna Madan,” she tells her younger sister as villagers chit chat sitting on the porch.
She then stands up and starts walking!
The entire settlement is abuzz. People are amazed to see a debilitated Jhamak walk around, many rub their eyes in disbelief.
This was the first shot of the movie, and Buddhacharya was playing Jhamak.
“My mind then went blank,” remembers Buddhacharya.
“Tears started rolling down my cheek.”
After a few minutes, Jhamak’s mother came to her and hugged her tightly. Her eyes were wet. The mother she had lost as a child was back.
