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Dividing her time between acting, activism and writing books for children, Nandana Sen said that writing helps her acting and vice versa.
"Acting and writing are both ways of telling a story, of creating emotions and characters. The way I tell a story has been deeply influenced by my experience as an actor. Similarly, as an actor I am hugely affected by the fact that as writers, we are always using our imagination to make up characters," Nandana told PTI on the interdependence of the worlds of acting and writing.
Her last film was Ketan Mehta-directed 2014 movie
Rang Rasiya, a biopic on painter Raja Ravi Verma. Since then she has written two children's books
Kangaroo Kisses and
Mambi and the Forest Fire.
"The way I storyboarded
Mambi which, I've been told is very "cinematic" in its conception, had a great deal to do with my experience in film. And in acting, I prepare for my role just like a writer extensively sketches out a character," Nandana, daughter of economist Amartya Sen, said.
She said as an actor, she explores, she imagines, and then writes down every small thing in the back-story of the part. "You would never see these details in the film but they affect the character's choices and behaviour. So I have to make my character's back-story very real while acting, and also, of course, while I'm writing," Nandana said.
The actress-turned-author was dividing her time between acting, child rights and writing, during her stay in Mumbai.
"Now that I have moved away from Mumbai, I still divide time between these three worlds. Now the emphasis is to spend more time on writing," Nandana said adding that she hasn't left Bollywood yet.
"I have always done films that have some strong social or political conscience and to the causes that I am passionate about. I will continue to do that," said Nandana, who has been actively working on issues with UNICEF and Operation Smile and National Council for Protection of Child Rights.
The stories she has written in the books, she said, had been building up in her while working with children.
"I have wanted to have the time to write. Had I not decided to move away from full-time acting it wouldn't have been possible. It was a natural decision for me," she said.
Nandana had started writing fiction at the age of ten and her first piece of published writing was a poem selected by Satyajit Ray in
Sandesh magazine.
An activist at heart, Nandana said what draws her to children's books is the same thing that attracts her to cinema; both have tremendous capacity to transform the world.
"But this book sensitises children about courage, about helping others in need and about loving yourself while respecting diversity," she said.