The seeds of Santosh, the film, was found amid angry female protestors, following the Delhi sexual assault incident in 2012, who were being pushed back by a line of female police officers. British-Indian director Sandhya Suri was fascinated by one constable who stood out from the rest. She just stood there with a stunned expression on her face. In that very instant, the disillusionment on her face, whose uniform accrued to her the power to wield the stick, humanised the cop. Suri eked out the titular character of her film Santosh from that momentary observation. And Shahana Goswami became Santosh, who undergoes a transition from a timid, veiled, newly widowed woman to availing her deceased husband's police job with the government scheme of ‘appointment on compassionate grounds’. The film and the character's journey, through religious and caste divides, soon decays from a sense of achievement to serve justice to walking into a trap that sanctions oppression of the downtrodden.
Shahana Goswami, who grew up in Delhi and moved to Bombay has been working in the Hindi film industry since 2006, when Naseeruddin Shah launched her in Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota. Goswami has worked in many offshore projects, from Bangladesh to Bhutan, BBC series to Australian production. This year, her film Santosh, directed by British-Indian Sandhya Suri and co-starring Sunita Rajwar, that premiered at Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard segment, has been selected as the UK's official Oscar 2025 entry/nominee. The film screened at the just-concluded 13th Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), where Goswami was also in a masterclass conversation on 'Stepping into Character' with the festival's programme director Bina Paul. At DIFF, Goswami spoke to Moneycontrol about landing the role of Santosh, a female cop belonging to a milieu and reality far removed from her own. She also talks about not enjoying the process of theatre and thriving in cinema, about friendships, MeToo and racism in Bollywood, working with strong women and sensitive male directors, becoming a global actor, and her character in the forthcoming Manoj Bajpayee-starrer Despatch. Excerpts:
Congratulations. How does it feel that your film is going to the Oscars?
It’s great. I mean, it was very unexpected and I love surprises in life. So, I think it’s been like one of those moments where it was not even a thought and then it’s suddenly happening and so you just get to celebrate it for what it is. And, yeah, it is exciting.
How did the film come about? Have you known director Sandhya Suri from before?
No, not at all. I had no connections to Sandhya. Sandhya grew up in England and, somehow, we didn’t have any overlaps before with her. She’s done a [BAFTA-nominated] short film called The Field (2018) as well, but we somehow never had any run-ins. And it was very bizarre because at the Zwigato (2022) premiere (in Mumbai), (casting director) Mukesh (Chhabra) and Sanjay Bishnoi, who’s also in the film (Santosh), who was then helping Mukesh with the casting, having watched Zwigato, they were like, you have to come and audition for Santosh. And, literally, the next day, I met Sandhya because she was visiting casting for the character and I met her and didn’t even know that I was going to do an audition. I thought I was just meeting her. And, then, we ended up impromptu doing some scenes and auditioning. And before I knew it, it was kind of like, ‘oh, can we do some chemistry tests with prospective Sharmas, the other character in the film [Sunita Rajwar played Geeta Sharma]? And then, suddenly, I was told, okay, this is happening. And then when I read the script, it was something that was so compelling. Sandhya wrote such a fantastic script and, of course, clearly executed it equally well. But it was the script that I think really kind of pulled everyone into it.
You had an emotional breakdown before you went on to do the film.
Yeah (laughs), I have a lot of imposter syndrome in life, including watching myself doing this interview and saying, why am I being interviewed? But, I think, it’s just one of those things because, we all have various insecurities that we live with and it’s good to be able to acknowledge these things to yourself and to others and but, I’m not a trained actor and I got into films very accidentally and immediately. I have done very little theatre (with Jaimini Pathak). And I’m not very comfortable being on stage either. I don’t enjoy that process. But film is my calling in that sense. When I am in front of the camera, I thrive. But I just keep feeling, like, why me? And with Santosh, this is probably the second time in my life that I was doing a film which was entirely about my character. And the other film I’d done was 10 years before that, which was a Bangladeshi film called Under Construction. And just the fact that I was doing this film and whenever you’re playing a character that is far removed from your own reality, in a sense, in terms of what you’ve lived and what you know, in terms of your socioeconomic background, in terms of the circumstances of your life, I keep feeling an added sense of responsibility in terms of making it authentic, but not making it feel enacted. My own judgment is so strong. And I don’t have a process as an actor in terms of getting into character. So, I think, I was in a phase where I was speaking to my friends who are actors, and I would watch their work and appreciate the fine-tuned aspects of their thing. And I had a moment where I was like, I have done no prep. I tried doing prep and I failed at doing prep. And I was like, I don’t know who Santosh is. What am I doing? Why have they taken me? What am I going to do? Tomorrow the shoot starts, and I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m totally unprepared. And, so…
But how did you go about stepping into the character as a female cop? Was there any precedent, since in recent times we’ve been seeing a lot of female police officers on screen.
Yeah, I didn’t. I have played a cop before, actually, in a series called The Last Hour (2021). But that was a very different milieu. She was more somebody from my background, my milieu. And it was set in the Northeast, which has a different flavour anyway. But this one, we did have some access to the research that Sandhya had done. And we met a few female cops and people she had worked with during her research time. And that kind of helped to be able to observe people in their working space. Because, I think, our idea of cops comes from films that we’ve watched. A lot of these professional worlds, you only know them through what you’ve seen in cinema. And then those have been male. But, also, just the milieu is something that is based not on real experience of having seen it. So, I think that really helped because there is a kind of nonchalance to something that you do on a daily basis, including when you have an inquiry happening on something that is difficult. We have this idea that it becomes self-serious and the person will be righteous all the time. They are not. For them, it’s mundane, it’s everyday, in a sense. And that’s part and parcel...it’s like how we think surgeons conduct surgeries very seriously, but they sing or gossip during surgeries. It was a bit of that. But, I think, I always say I get by with a lot of help from my friends. That’s why I like film as a process because you have a lot of space where people are constantly holding you. Whether it’s the camera, the lighting, your co-actor, the director, the props, the movement, the space, the clothes you wear, it’s all helping you come into that being. So, for me, even getting into the costume, getting into the look, the character as it’s written, the scenes that you’re playing out, I feel like you just have to let things happen actually as an actor.
Women in positions of power, such as that of a police officer, tend to behave like men.
Oh, yes.
So, to play Santosh, what did Sandhya tell you to sort of incorporate in your character?
So, one is that in Santosh, there is a graph because she comes in being a complete beginner in a sense, you see her coming into that. But not just beginner in terms of like the job, but she’s also a very unsure person. When she comes, you see her in a very frail moment of her life and she slowly learns the ropes and begins to find her identity and her power as a cop. And then the journey of the disillusionment of that as well. So, it was a very interesting graph. And that graph was also very clearly designed in that sense. So, it was easier for me to play with that.
Recently you’ve done an Australian TV series, Four Years Later; you played the lead in Rubaiyat Hossain’s Bangladeshi film Under Construction (2015) and in Khyentse Norbu’s Bhutanese-Indian romance drama Vara: A Blessing (2013). Is it more gratifying as an actor to work in these cross-border productions or is it that Bollywood doesn’t have roles for actors like you?
I’m greedy and hungry as an actor, I want to do it all. I would love to experience everything from Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra to Khyentse Norbu or Jim Jarmusch or Wong Kar-wai, my greatest desire is to also work with (Pedro) Almodovar, now that he’s making English-language films, maybe it can happen. And his film is screening right after ours (at DIFF), so maybe that’s a sign (laughs). But, yeah, I think I’m just hungry to be able to do and I would love to be able to do films that are shown all over the world. I think that’s also the other thing that I love about cinema is that it’s so universal in its accessibility. And as an audience also I feel that having consumed films in different languages, from different parts of the world, different cultures, and you still feel so deeply moved by and deeply connected to films despite that. And that’s something that I enjoy as a person being part of films as well. So, as an actor, I would like to collaborate with as many kinds of people from all over, however many languages, skills, roles, positions I have to fill and learn and grow into. I would love to be a global actor.
You have worked with some phenomenal female directors.
My god, I have more female directors I’ve worked with than male directors.
And twice with Nandita Das, in Firaaq (2008) and Zwigato (2022).
Yes.
What is it that women directors bring to the table that male directors don’t?
You know, this question I get asked a lot. I don’t feel like I see any gender difference. I will say that there are differences in personalities, but that personality difference…I have worked with very sensitive male directors, and I enjoy the process of getting into a director’s head. Whether it’s Khyentse Norbu, Arjun Bali, Abhishek Kapoor, or Anubhav Singh, they’re all very sensitive men. I have also worked with very sensitive and strong women. So, it’s not really a gender difference that I see. But I feel very happy and very privileged that in a time as we live in today…
And Naseeruddin Shah…
And Naseeruddin Shah, my first director, what a joy and what a privilege. But I just feel fascinated that at a time when this is a need in terms of having more representation, having more of a voice and trying to find a more equal grounding for representation across the board. And of course, women’s representation being on top of the list because that’s been a fight, that imbalance has been there for a long time, that in the middle of that milieu, I’ve ended up actually working with more female directors and more South Asian directors. They are all South Asian directors. So, that to me is amazing. And I feel very, very privileged to be a part of that.
Do true friendships exist in Bollywood?
Absolutely. Again, I would say this is the function of…I do agree that there is an element of the profession being a certain way that can make it hard, perhaps, but I have really, really close friends. And I think that it’s to do with your personality. My guess would be that the people who have trouble making friends in whatever industry they are, they probably have trouble making friends anywhere in their life. So, I’m very blessed with really great quality of friendships.
Is the fair-skin-obsession becoming less in Bollywood now?
I think so. I feel like I never had that, even though I have every reason to have been rejected or felt that I had that reaction to my skin, I never felt that discrimination. In fact, I felt included in places that I would have imagined that I would not have access to or not be welcomed or not be. So, I personally haven’t. But I have seen it play out. And I’ve heard enough stories from people where it’s played out.
Have you heard of MeToo cases within the Hindi film industry?
That is also I’ve heard of, but again, it is something that I personally have not experienced but I have heard from people and I have known of these experiences that friends or friends of friends have had.
But there’s no body in Bollywood like, say, Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) in Malayalam film industry, to fight for the rights of female film professionals.
No, unfortunately. But sometimes I keep thinking that things that are not happening is also a good way for things to happen. So, sometimes like you have to hit a certain rock bottom or a dead end for people to then do something. So, if it’s not happened yet, it will happen.
Next, we see you in Kanu Behl’s Despatch, opposite Manoj Bajpayee. Tell us about your character?
So, Shweta (Bag), the entire graph of that character is, you know, there was a kind of very short but very precise graph in terms of being in a relationship which is already failing. So, you see them in an already failing relationship and you see the last dregs of trying to save it and then giving up. So, it was like that last gasp of air and then the ending sigh, which I thought was a very interesting aspect of a journey of a relationship and to be seen in as a character that only appears for that. So, there was so much to play with. And Kanu is a great director to work with, as an actor, and even though we had very little time on this film together, I really enjoyed the experience of working with him because he is a very unique filmmaker in the way he makes films and, besides, the language of his cinema as well. And to get to work with Manoj (Bajpayee) was, of course, a dream. And that both these dreams of working with Kanu and Manoj were fulfilled in this. It was a very fulfilling experience to do that. And that film is also hopefully coming in December (on Zee5).
As a Delhi girl, Shahana, do you prefer Delhi or Bombay?
Bombay (laughs).
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