An exhibition of her paintings, a Bollywood release and a stage musical...Suchitra Krishnamoorthi celebrates the varied expressions of her personality.

Actor, singer...now artist and playwright, Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, has inched back into the arc lights after almost six years. For about five, she followed her husband, director, Shekhar Kapur, gypsy like, moving from one city to another, one film premiere to another. “It wasn’t out of choice,” she reflects. “My natural instinct is to be home bound. Since I married a man who is a wanderer at heart, I was just trying to be a good wife.”

One day, she got bored and returned home, to Mumbai. By then she also had Kaveri, her baby. “I love my freedom, so it was fine living here with my daughter while Shekhar did his own thing. I have a great support system in my family and my friends.” After almost a year-and-a-half of being a stay-at-home mom, Suchitra has returned to some serious work.

Like acting, for one. Seen last on celluloid 11 years ago in the endearing Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naan, she chose to make her silver screen comeback as Sheela, the wife, in Ram Gopal Varma’s My Wife’s Murder, a role that’s as unglamorous as it gets. “My ambition is not to be a Hindi film heroine. I am past the stage when someone would look at me and say, ‘she is so glamorous’,” says Suchitra.

If playing an emotionally wrought Sheela was physically exhausting, Suchitra’s new found passion for art proved therapeutic. “It was September 27, last year, when art ‘came’ to me,” she declares. “On the last day of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, I ended up weeping for hours and thought I had gone mad. I went over to my neighbour, art writer, Sonia Dutta’s house and asked her for some canvases.”

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