In Asanghadithar, meaning the unorganised, a segment in the anthology Freedom Fight, actor Kabani H plays herself. She introduces herself as Kabani, an active member of Penkootu, a group that was formed in a street of Kozhikode to win toilet access for women workers there. Two short films later, in Ration, part of the same anthology, Kabani is cast as a woman in a lower-middle-class home, running hither and thither to replace a fish she accidentally cooked. In both the films, you can’t fail to notice her character, presented with a quiet perfection that neither calls attention to herself nor lets you forget her.
"I don't know if you can call me an activist but I have been a member of Penkootu since the time it formed ten years ago. Art will always have an element of activism," Kabani says in an interview with TNM. That's what she has been, an artiste, since she was 15 years old, playing parts in street dramas. Many were political as street dramas tend to be. Her father was active in politics and some of it rubbed off on her in her early years.
As years passed, the dramas she became part of shifted from the street to the stage. Still, that didn't ensure a steady income. "For that, I became a dubbing artiste. I must have dubbed in scores of serials, short fiction and films in the past 20 years," she says.
Hers was the voice of the female lead in Jayaraj's Veeram and in Odunnon, a drama film by Noushad Ibrahim. She also dubbed for women actors in movies remade in Malayalam from other languages.
"During the time, I also acted in small roles in a number of films. It began with Jayaraj sir's Gulmohar," she says.
Kabani got a major break when she played the daughter of Sajitha Madathil and Kalabhavan Shajohn in Pareed Pandari. Afterward, Jeo Baby called her to play Usha, the domestic worker, in The Great Indian Kitchen. The movie and everyone who worked in it got worldwide attention.
"Francies, who was the editor of The Great Indian Kitchen, was looking for a female lead for his segment in Freedom Fight. Finally, it came to me. It was great working in the film, knowing everyone on the set, and where everyone respected each other," Kabani says.
In Ration, directed by Francies, she plays the wife of Jeo Baby. She seems quite at ease in the small household, packing boxes of chicken curry for the neighbours on her daughter's birthday. You don't fail to notice the contrast between the rich and the not-so-rich households. While Kabani passes on chapati and chicken, cooked on a special occasion, to the neighbour, the latter stacks varieties of meat and fish in her overcrowded refrigerator. Francies' film is full of subtleties, unwilling to state the obvious, relying on mild expressions and sensitivities of the actors. And Kabani excels in it.
"All I think about when I act is that it has to be the director's vision, not mine. It also helped that my own daughter Saira Vijesh played the daughter in the film," Kabani says.
Kabani feels that acting opportunities came late to her since she was known better as a dubbing artiste. She rues that dubbing artistes rarely get their due recognition. "Also, now that more filmmakers are opting for sync sound, dubbing opportunities have also become less," she adds.
Apart from the dubbing and the acting work, she is also doing her Master’s in Theater at Kalady University. As part of the course, Kabani acted in and directed a play called Lady Macbeth, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth.