says. Kalki is the face of brands like Oriflame,
Cotton World and Hidesign.
There was a period after her divorce from
filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, in 2013, when
she, quite literally, couldn’t afford to strike
that balance between art and commerce. Her
marriage had just fallen apart, and she was
back to living alone and paying rent. Previously,
she and Anurag were living in a flat for which
they had jointly taken a loan. Her troubles were
compounded by a sudden illness in her family
that she had to finance. The first sacrifice Kalki
had to make was to put aside theatre for a few
years and concentrate only on jobs that would
bring in substantial money. Now, she makes
it a point to do at least one play a year. “I had
to work really hard after I left Anurag,” she
says. “That part of my life was all about cutting
ribbons. It was so disorienting. You reach a
hotel, you don’t really connect with anybody,
you cut a ribbon, and then take photos with
the family and cousins of the family who are
funding it. You don’t learn or grow. At the
beginning I didn’t have a good attitude about it,
but then I thought at least I’m meeting all sorts
of people. And suddenly things happened that
got me to a Ted Talk or a FICCI talk.”
This wasn’t the first time Kalki was exposed
to the famous Mumbai hustle that every youngactor has to endure. “I remember when I had to
go for social events, I would get that one Long
Island iced tea and sip on it all night. It has
the most amount of alcohol for least amount
of money. So you have to find your strategies
to living with less,” she says. In her pre-Dev.D
years, Kalki did what every true struggler must
do—go for daily auditions, crash on friend’s
couches and accept embarrassing jobs to
make that month’s rent. “The worst thing I
did was this awful teleshopping ad. It was for
one of those useless weight loss machines. I
remember it was this jiggly thing—you put it
on and weight is supposed to just fall off! I was
made to wear pink hot pants and a bra. But I
got paid around `20,000 and that was great. I
was living on a week-to-week basis because I
didn’t have financial support from my parents.”
When the ads and modelling assignments
started rolling in with some regularity, Kalki
did the other thing every struggler must do—
get an impressive portfolio. “My portfolio had
sexy photos of me in a bikini. It was shot by a
photographer who had a studio in Aram Nagar
with a backyard. In some of those photos, I was
climbing a tree in a two-piece. They weren’t
really Bollywood and bling, but I thought they
were pretty nice,” she says. When these photos
landed on Anurag Kashyap’s desk, who was
then looking to cast Chanda in Dev.D, his exact
words were: “I don’t want another Russian
model. I need a real actress.”
These words bring her to mull on what the
definition of a ‘real actress’ would be today.
Stars like Sonam Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and“I had to work really hard after I left Anurag.
That part of my life was all about cutting
ribbons. It was so disorienting”
“You have to
realise it’s not
just films and
ads, there’s
this whole
other world
that is a part
of maintaining
your life as a
celebrity”
32 Outlook Money March 2018 http://www.outlookmoney.com
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