Allowing a flood of emotion to spill out, Meenakshi Jayan took a microphone in one hand and in the other, held the Golden Goblet award she’d just won at the Shanghai International Film Festival. She thanked Shanghai in Chinese, letting her voice break with joy, clearly overwhelmed by the reception that her first feature film was getting in a foreign land. Victoria, after several recognitions at home in Kerala and India, has now won her the best actress award in the Asia New Talent at Shanghai. In the same breath that she thanked her audience in China, Meenakshi drew out superlatives to describe her director – the most beautiful, amazing, brilliant – Sivaranjini.
“This award is for all the women who were asked to stay silent, who were told that they were too much. We are done with that. I am going to be too much from today,” Meenakshi yelled into the mic, the same few words she jotted down on her social media profile: Be too much.
It is like all the pictures of your vision board were stepping out, the red carpet and the golden goblet and all of it, she tells TNM a day after winning the award. “It is all so dreamy that I am going through some pinch-myself moments here to believe it is true. I want to scream to all dreamers like me out there that it is real, that the things you dream can come true,” she says.
Meenakshi speaks with an enviable raw honesty when she narrates her journey into cinema, her childhood days of “playing” Manichithrathazhu with her cousins, and her love for Shah Rukh Khan.
She names Shobana and Shah Rukh Khan as the two people responsible for her foray into acting. She was not born when Manichithrathazhu was released, but watching it on television is one of her earliest memories of cinema.
“My cousins and I would play the roles and take turns to be Nagavalli. I could not wait to be Nagavalli – the idea of Ganga becoming someone else was too enchanting for me. I was so awestruck by the film at that age that I am sure it changed something within me,” Meenakshi says.
Her next reason, Shah Rukh Khan, appeared before her as ‘a beautiful boy in Kuch Kuch Hota Hein’. “I thought then that the boys in my class were so basic, but this guy who showed up in Doordarshan was so beautiful. I was sure that all I had to do was grow up and become an actor like Kajol or Rani Mukherjee to marry Shah Rukh Khan. That was the logic of a child. I had long outgrown that phase, but even now, just the thought of him, just looking at the many small pictures of him, makes me happy. It makes me want to work hard.”
It is difficult to merge the young, dreamy woman with the actor who took extra pains to turn into the troubled beautician in Victoria. The film portrays the mental struggle of a young woman, hiding her angst over relationship issues as she toils in a beauty parlour, ironically a space where other women come to relax and forget their troubles.
When Meenakshi answered the casting call, she was told that they were looking for someone with an Angamaly accent. Meenakshi is from Tripunithura, another end of Ernakulam that is linked to Vaikom and Kottayam. Angamaly spoke a different Malayalam, more singsong like the neighbouring Chalakudy.
“I took a bus to Angamaly with a friend and began speaking to butchers and people working at mobile stores and textile shops. I listened to their recorded conversations to pick up the accent. It was musical,” Meenakshi says.
Further, she was introduced to the director of the film, Sivaranjini, as someone who is from Angamaly. The first conversation, a small one, felt warm. There was a connection, Meenakshi felt. The audition that came afterwards was one of the best she had given, she says, knowing that she’d done well. She can’t speak enough about her layered character. “I will be grateful to Siva for casting me in Victoria for the rest of my life,” she says.
For a month before the shooting, Meenakshi went to a beauty parlour in Angamaly to understand the work of a beautician. A young woman named Victoria and another she calls Neethu chechi taught her everything from threading to waxing to pedicure and applying Henna on hair, she says. “We’d open the shop together in the morning, clean up the parlour, and have tea in the break time. They would introduce me to the customers as the new girl. Without their support, it would have been a different Victoria in the film. Everyone appreciates the breakdown scene in the film. I feel that was possible, that my character became true because of these small details in parlour work,” she says.
If you observe the parlour scenes, Meenakshi’s mannerisms – her quick movements and ease with the equipment and the tasks at hand – make her a natural at work. In TNM’s review of the film, we observe how admirably Meenakshi lets the emotions fall off her face to be replaced by the impassivity of a working professional when she steps into the parlour, and just as quickly unmasks herself in the privacy of a restroom.
Victoria was empathised with everywhere. People rooted for her; they wanted to hug her. “The reception that Victoria got in Shanghai is proof that human emotions are universal. That is what China taught me,” Meenakshi says.