The Elemental
An idle potter's wheel sits in her aesthetically spartan barsati in Delhi. Nandita Das, 29-going-on-19, is seldom home: Kerala one fortnight, Orissa, Mumbai, Hyderabad, the next. Wherever, to act in films being made by directors as seasoned as Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani, international like Deepa Mehta or relative greenhorns like Nagesh Kukunoor. "For me the script matters, it has to be something I'm comfortable with." So when the discomfort levels rise or Bollywood gets too tantalising, she's back at the wheel, trying to centre herself again.

Earthy, elemental (she's now doing Water after Fire and Earth in Mehta's trilogy), she vacillates between the worlds of social activism and the arc lights: the universe of her father painter Jatin Das and mother Varsha who is in publishing. Catapulted into celebrity--and notoriety--after the lesbian scenes in Fire, Das is seen as a possible successor to Smita Patil: she, too, has the rather rare combination of sense and sensuality. There's still a vacancy sign up for an actress who can steam up the screen in commercial cinema without looking as if she's come out of some identikit or be both convincing and light up alternate cinema with her flashing black eyes. If Nandita looks and works harder, she could see her own reflection.