Lara Dutta’s back to base, fresh from a short sojourn in Colombo, where she co-hosted the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards ceremony for the fifth time. Swishing up the green carpet in style, overcoming last-minute nerves and frissons of excitement, Dutta revelled in the camaraderie, the ribbing with Boman Irani and Riteish Deshmukh, the bonhomie and bonding with old colleagues and new friends in the emer.ald isle. “It is a very exclusive event which is a key reason for me to get aligned with the property. Performing and hosting, going in front of an audience is always an exhilarating experience and it is platforms and avenues like this that drive me,” she emphasises. “And Riteish, Boman and I work extremely hard on the script. It goes through 15 drafts before we perform it on stage. While we folllow a script, some of the gags and twists are very spontaneous. We share a great chemistry and it all boils down to a great mix of experience, entertainment and glamour.”

Her calendar has been dotted with travel. A few weeks earlier, she had returned from Verve’s cover shoot in icy cool Paris to a steaming Mumbai summer. Soon after, locating Dutta’s abode in a by-lane of suburban Mumbai takes a little bit of time as a simple series of crossroads turns into a maze on a hot sluggish afternoon. Building tracked and reaching the floor on which her apartment is located, one can hear the barking of dogs inside. When her Maid Friday opens the door, she bids me to wait till she ties up the canine. The actor is on her way back from an appointment and I wait in the living room that is simply furnished with all that makes up a home – nothing starry or fussy. In one corner, the familiar face of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar smiles down benignly from a side table.

Dutta strolls in, her well-manicured toes peeping out of her slippers; enviously cool as a cucumber in the heat, from a fresh chic haircut done by her friend and faithful hairstylist, Clarabelle Saldanha. Rather pleased with the short new look, she flops down and requests her maid to return with glasses of chilled orange Tang. Naturally the heat is the conversation-opener of the day, as Dutta recalls her recent trip to Paris where she shot our cover in almost freezing temperatures. “I enjoyed every moment of it,” she says. “It was so cold then. I have always loved Montmartre. The first time I went to Paris, I was 27 and had never seen anything as beautiful as Le Sacré Coeur. This time, though it was so cold, when you are wearing such chic clothes, you forget the temperature. Everyone is staring at you. When you are shooting in Paris, you feel you are a top model with a very thin figure, who is about six feet tall and is making these clothes unbelievable. I think I had an alter ego that got into my body when I was out there.”

Looking at her fit frame, clad in a figure-hugging short dress, it is difficult to imagine the actor going overboard on food fancies. But Dutta, rewinding again to her visits to Paris says, “In Paris, I indulge myself. I must have my almond croissants from Paul’s. The second must is shopping. And if I could refer to a third, there is one painting that I have to see every time, if my schedule permits. It is not the Mona Lisa but a painting depicting the crucifixion of Christ. I know exactly where it is in the Louvre and run down to look at it.”

Referring to the ‘presence’ of the Art of Living guru in her hall, Dutta says she got interested when she was being groomed for the Miss Universe beauty pageant, so many years ago. But more than any belief she feels that her upbringing – with a Catholic mother and Hindu father – shaped her thinking, making her more ‘spiritual than religious’. “My parents gave us all the freedom to choose our way of life and thinking. But it is more over the last five years, that my life took a turn and I started living in a more holistic manner. I find that in the world I exist in, with the craziness of my business, it gives me a lot of stability and grounding.”

Stardom has been the result of a long journey that required blending with the craziness of the business of B’town. “I started very young. I was modelling when I was 16. It is a fantastic industry to be a part of, but it is a bit of a circus. I do not have mentors or a family that handles my career or looks after everything while I go out to work. I am pretty much a single-handed machine. But I have made my choices and I am happy with them,” says the actor who has completed ten years here.

“I have made my peace with my body....”
Dutta does not feel that she has the perfect frame. There are others, like the models who romanced the ramp at the Paris Fashion Week in Louis Vuitton’s show, whom she could never dream of emulating. Referring to her genetic DNA she laughingly says, “I have never subscribed to the idea of being really thin even though at times my work has demanded it. I have always had a healthy body image. I am a five-feet-eight-inches-tall Punjabi Catholic woman. I made my peace with my body a long time ago and decided to make the most of it. I don’t like being over muscular or being extremely thin.”

The desire to be ‘fit and healthy’ has always been the USP of her fitness regimes. And, she insists that she has never been on a single diet all her life. “That does not mean that I can indulge or eat anything,” she ripostes in reaction to my obvious scepticism. “I actually thrive on discipline which is one of my strong points. I believe in balancing out my life where you eat whatever you want within limits. I like working out and it works for me. I don’t beat myself up. It is a more holistic approach to things. I meditate. You can have amazing powers if you can teach yourself breathing techniques.”

Whatever formula Dutta follows has worked for her as has been amply proved in her hot bod image in her recent releases like Housefull and Blue, the occasional movie like Billu proving to be an exception to the rule. She is not ruffled by the tag of ‘sexy actor’. “I don’t find the label limiting in any way,” she says. “Perhaps the one thing that I found limiting was the Miss Universe tag. I came in from the modelling world, one that has a lot of glamour attached to it. Then, people found it hard to identify with someone who is ultra glam. The average Indian woman, who identifies with a wholesome girl, says I am never going to look like that.”

Her connect with the audiences – the common man and woman on the street – has come through comedy. Dutta laughs out loud, “It was a genre of films that I was good at. Through comedy I broke down the image of a glam persona because I have been kooky, funny and weepy on screen. And it is a big compliment to have my comic timing compared with Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit!

“I see myself as being witty and wealthy....”
Stretching out on the cane sofa, Dutta confesses that she is proud of her inner growth, something evidenced in a film like Blue that she almost turned down because of her fear of water. “I said ‘no’ initially,” she remarks. “But I slept over it. If you sign a film for that much money you cannot show up and say you are not doing it. It was literally a case of sink or swim. I took it on because it gave me the opportunity after a very long time to push myself to overcome something that was a big obstacle to me. I think of it as an incredible accomplishment. I was absolutely terrified of water and today, the fact that I am a certified diver is a little difficult for me to believe. If you are able to overcome fear, it is an amazing breakthrough. Life holds you back from being and becoming the person you want to be. I see myself as being eccentric and witty and wealthy. If there are things that are going to hold me back from doing that, I want to break through them.”

Planning seems to be her middle name for she has never let her hair down in public, coming across as someone who measures almost every word she says, every step she takes. And yet she would have you believe, as she says, “I am an Arian and impulsive. It is an Arian trait of doing things first and figuring them out later. My 20s were spent living my life at such a hectic pace that I had never had a chance to sit down and figure it all out. I am blessed that things progressed in that fashion. This meant that there was a tremendous amount of growing up that happened overnight. When I look back I feel that at the age of 17, I was a 30-year-old. I lived on my own, ran my own house, put myself through college, nurtured my own career, paid my own bills. I lived in a separate city from my parents. I am a bit of an old soul but I grew up with a lot of responsibility. My parents were very clear that if we wanted to branch out and follow the careers we had chosen, then we were responsible for our own lives.”

“There is nothing left to prove....”
Right from her involvement with model Kelly Dorjee, Dutta has never hidden the fact that she has been in a relationship. Today, ask her about tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi though – who had dropped by at Verve’s shoot in Paris – and she looks at me with a small smile but all that the actor will say is, “We are good friends. We chose to attend an awards ceremony together. That was the statement we wanted to make at that time and this is the only statement I will make now.” Incidentally, the actor was seen with the tennis player at the IIFA.

Her 30s have given her a sense of freedom. “I feel a lot of calm,” she states. “There is a sense of freedom, maturity and relief at having left my 20s behind me. I am in a space which people reach much later in their lives. There is nothing left to prove to anyone. Everything I went through in life – even when I thought the end-of-life woe was on me – every single thing which was a bump in the road, made me a stronger person. I think the maximum amount of growth happens during those periods of extreme darkness. It does not stress me out. I actually smile. I know that it’s there because it is going to get me through stronger.” An individual in the real sense of the word is a phrase that would define her and she is quick to agree: “I would rather be me than try and fit into a box or a label. I have always fought against being labelled.”

“I am not a fussy dresser....”
Her confidence comes through in her simple moves and the way she carries herself, a hangover perhaps of her Miss Universe days – observed in the time we spend with her, in Mumbai, Paris and Colombo. Laughing at the almost Marilyn Monroe moment when the skirt of her dress flared over in the heavy Parisian breeze, Dutta insists that she loves going Indian if possible.

Black, white and red are her fave hues and referring to her wardrobe choices, she says, “If I am going to an event I love wearing a sari, especially outside the country. My personal style is more classic than contemporary. I like tailored clothes and clean lines. I am not a fussy dresser. I would rather wear a fantastically cut pantsuit or a great dress than wearing what is in fashion now. Even while buying something ridiculously expensive, I would like to buy something that I know I could take out 10 years from now and is a great piece to have.”

“I want to live life to my full potential....”
Ten years in show business and Dutta feels it is time to move on to more challenging stuff. As an actor, “I want to do a mix of roles. Perhaps experiment on screen.” So, will 2010 be another defining moment in her beautiful life that has shaped up to her expectations, all hiccups and bumps notwithstanding? She hopes it will, saying, “It’s going be an interesting year for me. It will be one with a lot of changes. I want to diversify, write scripts, get into production perhaps. The lifestyle that I lead is a big part of who I am. I want to expand on it and make it more rounded. I want to live life to my full potential.”

It’s time to gaze into the future. Looking at five years down the line, Dutta feels, “I will still be a part of the business. By then I pretty much will have the whole production, direction, writing off the ground and running. Five years later? I still see myself as fabulous and thriving! And I am pretty sure that there are many more hydrophobias to overcome, bridges to jump off....”

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