Growing into a new role
The Hindu : Enough has been written about her career as an actress and the anomaly that her National Law School background presents to her image as a performer. But what has often escaped mention is Malavika Avinash’s intellect. For an industry which prides itself on its ability to deliver an unending list of “pretty young things”, bracketing the rebellious Malavika has always been a somewhat onerous task.She is back again in public life after an eight-month hiatus, with her 30-day-old baby boy in her arms. Malavika’s first statements are more a confession of a new-found sobriety: “Suddenly the ‘so what’ facet of my personality has receded. My indifference for future consequences of my actions has been replaced with a realisation of the fact that somebody really special is so helplessly dependent on me.”But as the conversation progresses it becomes apparent that the rebel in her has only made a transition from an unbridled, free-speaking radical to a focussed campaigner.“The feminist in me has had its rough edges shorn off. A few years, maybe even a few months ago, I would have pounced on someone if I saw the slightest hint of sexism, an insensitive joke or statement would have me going ballistic. I am perhaps a little more tolerant now.”Her political ambitions too are yet to be doused.“I am surely not a radical communist. However, as a youngster who grew up in post-Emergency India, I am a socialist by default. For someone like me politics is a natural progression.”Although a critic of the “world is getting smaller” theory, she confesses that she too has been subsumed by globalisation. She points to the mobile phone in her hands and the big car we are travelling in. “The smaller aspirations of life make way for the big dream. With globalisation of the American dream everything has to be big — big car, big house, big budget cinema…”Going by that,…More
