I t’s rude to look closely at somebody’s breakfast, but I can’t help myself. You are, as the sages said, what you eat. Nandita Das is having fruits — pieces of pineapples peep out of a bed of grapes — and a glass of milk. The nutrients are doing their bit. On Saturday, she turned 40 — but still looks like a college kid. Not much older, in fact, than the audience that she seeks to address in her new avatar.

“Age is all in the mind in any case,” the actress-filmmaker says as she neatly spears what looks like a slice of guava into her mouth. “The core has remained the same since I was 18.”

That’s good news, for Das is now the chairperson of the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI), and busy giving last minute touches to its annual children’s film festival, being held in Hyderabad from November 14. For the first time, two juries comprising children will take part in the festival, along with the usual panels of adults. “We have to know what children think.”

It’s a tip that would help — for Das didn’t grow up watching films. Her parents — artist Jatin Das and mother Varsha, who retired as a director of the National Book Trust — focused more on the arts. Nandita and her brother Siddharth, now a designer, would visit the book fair and attend dance recitals and music concerts. “Other than Haathi Mere Saathi, I have no memory of watching any film with my parents ever,” she laughs.

Das never thought she’d join cinema — for acting didn’t particularly interest her. But as a student of Delhi’s Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, she had been drawn to the activities of the Jana Natya Manch, a street theatre group that was led by activist Safdar Hashmi, killed in an attack by a Congressman in 1989.

“Safdar used to always tell me that I should take acting more seriously. He wanted me to join something like the National School of Drama. But I never thought acting was what I wanted to do,” she says.

But a role in a low budget film called Ek Thi Gunja changed all that. It was a film that did the festival circuit, got shown on television and died a quiet death. But the film and Das got written about in a newspaper, which someone brought to director Deepa Mehta’s notice. Mehta, then casting for Fire, zeroed in on Das. And Das went on to hit the headlines — not least of all because the film showed her in what’s called a compromising position with her sister-in-law, a role played by Shabana Azmi. Hindu activists stoned cinema halls screening the 1996 film, incensed by the theme of lesbianism, but more irked that the two women were called Radha and Sita.

But Das has moved on. Fire is behind her, and there are six scripts locked in her laptop that she needs to look at. She has acted in 10 regional films — including Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Oriya. But that’s not surprising for she’s fluent in Oriya and Gujarati (her father is from Orissa, and her mother from Gujarat), and also speaks commendable Bengali.

“I do admit I have a flair for languages — both my parents have it. But the south Indian languages are really tough. Every time I do a film there I tell myself I am not going to do this again — everyone between shots is having fun and I am learning my lines like it’s an exam,” she complains. But then a story interests her, or there is somebody she wants to work with, and Das goes back to the south.

Regional cinema, Das stresses, attracts her. “Projects coming from Mumbai have to compromise a lot because they have to compete with the big fishes in a big pond. But I started noticing that films in other parts of the country are operating in smaller ponds, and thus making fewer compromises,” she says. “Yet by giving it a regional tab we somehow push it into some kind of a second class position.”

Das has made her presence felt in Bollywood as well. She was Amitabh Bachchan’s young wife in the 2001 film Aks. “I had initially said no — I didn’t feel that there was any need for the role to be that of a much younger wife. Not that I have issues about it — it happens all the time in life,” she says. Jatin Das’s second wife, in fact, is younger than him by several years.

Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra urged her to sit with the scriptwriter and develop the role. She did that over three or four months — by which time she’d got to know Mehra and his team, and had said yes to the role.

But even Aks, she stresses, does not fall strictly into the docket of mainstream Hindi cinema. “If you ask a mainstream person, he’ll think Aks is an aberration. Take my character — there is not a single line that makes me say: Oh my god!”

What agitates her about the Mumbai industry is the hierarchy that exists there. “Those intrinsic hierarchies are something that I instinctively resist. They exist much less in regional cinema, which is much more egalitarian, much more together.”

Das’s political leanings seemingly guide her decisions on cinema. Her directorial debut Firaaq, for instance, was based on the 2001 killings of Gujarat. “I did want to direct, but I didn’t think Firaaq would be my first film,” she says.

The Gujarat massacres, and before that the demolition of the Babri Masjid, agitated her. She had delivered a spate of talks on violence and identity in the aftermath of Gujarat. “But I felt that this wasn’t enough. I had these stories that I felt I needed to tell. That’s how Firaaq was born,” she says. “Later, I realised that it was a coming together of my many interests and concerns. My work and life are so intertwined I don’t even know which is when.”

Clearly, in a world where artistes have to be careful of what they say — actor Aamir Khan was boycotted in Gujarat for attending an anti-Narmada dam meeting — Nandita is a rebel. “My parents sometimes worry that I am outspoken about issues and get concerned about my safety. And I tell them, ‘You’ve taught me all the wrong things; you have always been outspoken and taken strong stands — that’s what we have learnt.’”

Her parents’ influences are all around her. We are sitting in her flat in south Delhi, tastefully done up in cream and beige, and full of books — an eclectic collection that includes Kahlil Gibran, Ritwik Ghatak, Rohinton Mistry and Tarun Tejpal. She points to a Jatin Das nude on the wall. “People say, ‘Oh, he makes nudes.’ But I completely understood him. He would say these are bare bodies that have no time or space. The minute you clothe them you are putting them in some context.”

Das remembers growing up surrounded by music and art — but untouched by the cult of celebrity-hood. “Many of my father’s friends were famous musicians or photographers or painters. But I think this whole celebrity consciousness is much more now than it was then. So going backstage to meet Kumar Gandharva was exciting, but that was because his music was so amazing.”

Her father’s bohemian lifestyle and relationships did not trouble Nandita as she grew up — moving from school to major in geography in Miranda House, before doing a Masters from the Delhi School of Social Work. “There was honesty in those relationships. To find your real soulmate sometimes takes a long time — I don’t judge that at all,” says Das, whose husband and she have just divorced.

Das points out that she and her brother were never pressured on careers. “That’s why, even now, whenever I have to fill in something that asks my profession or occupation, it’s not one straight answer that comes to my mind.”

Das has a couple of regrets though. She would have loved to have learnt singing, but never did. And she never painted either. “People used to say, ‘So you are Jatin’s daughter, you are going to be a painter’. And I guess I had nothing else to rebel about, so I said, ‘No, I am not going to paint,’ which I think was one of the most foolish decisions. And my father used to always say you don’t have to paint to be a painter — paint for fun.”

After the Hyderabad festival, Das expects to get on with her own life. There are new scripts to be considered, and the CFSI has to be revamped. “And yes, I am in a relationship,” she says in answer to a bald question. ‘I’ve neither hidden my life, nor gone around talking about it.”

Das now has a series of meetings — and is all set to make a move. The breakfast, though, still remains unfinished.