CHATROOM

Bhumika joins me halfway through her photo shoot and offers coffee. I ask her about her success down south. How did she adapt to south Indian cinema since she is a Punjabi? She answers, "I have never had a problem. I am an army kid and I've been to so many places that adapting is never a problem."

She had a brief foray on the small screen appearing in ad films and the Zee TV series Hip Hip Hurray. She had an impressive debut in 2000 with the Telugu film Yuvakudu opposite Sumanth. Her second release Kushi shot up on the popularity charts. Bhumika had arrived. She was introduced to Mumbai with Tere Naam. For this she was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actress Award and won the Zee Cine Award for Best Debut.

Today she is a name to reckon with in Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu cinema. She says, "I've never had trouble working in regional movies. For instance, the crew of the Malayalam film Bhramaram was so friendly I felt totally at home." Ten years in the industry has not changed her priorities. She says, "Yes, I am choosy. Scripts like Missama and Anasuya don't often happen. Both these movies are high points in my career. Playing a crime journalist in Anasuya was great. On the sets I would ask the director all kinds of questions. I consider filmmaking a serious art not just entertainment."

But she does not nurture dreams of directing films just yet. She says, "Since I have seen the entire process of making films I realise how difficult direction is. It's a tough task. Each film maker has his own style. But if I do make films they will be like the ones Madhur Bhandarkar and Mahesh Manjrekar make. I loved Page 3, Chandni Bar and Astitva."

RESTRAINED EXPERIENCES

About Gandhi, My Father she says, "It's a role I instantly agreed to do. It was challenging, I was not even to gesture with my hands." She is so animated that playing a restrained Gulab Gandhi (Mahatma's bahu) must have been tough. She agrees that "You express so much with your body and hands, not just through your eyes or smile. But women those days had to be restrained. I had to wear a ghungat and had I gestured animatedly, it would have seemed artificial."

Bharat steps in with a cigarette and a cup of tea. He smiles at my reaction. "Yes, I am a yoga teacher who smokes. I spent years in the Himalayas and you will freeze there if you don't smoke. I am a different kind of yogi. You see many fake babas preaching but I tell the world what I am. Nothing has affected my energy levels. There are extreme conditions on the mountains and I survived on non-vegetarian food when I lived with my guru ? there is no vegetation there."

YOGA IN THE HIMALAYAS

He lived sixteen years of his life in the Himalayas with his guru Sukhdev Brahmachari who picked him up when he was just four. He learnt tantra and Vedic maths apart from yoga in the freezing snow! I ask him if tantra can be practiced in the concrete jungle. "No," he says. "People here are so scared of life. You must stay in the graveyard for hours together to learn tantra."

He carries on, "My parents, who were landlords, were childless for a very long time. It so happened that they met a tantric who said that they would have four children but he wanted the first child for himself. And I was the eldest." Coming back from the Himalayas at the age of twenty, he started his formal education and went on to acquire a Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology.

This was when he met Congressman Madhav Rao Scindia. This encounter led him to teach yoga at Scindia's school at Gwalior. Bharat reminisces, "Not just yoga, I would teach everyone at the school rock climbing and it was such fun. Soon I had a following there." Then he came to Delhi and started off on his own. The rest, as they say, is history. But a doubt lingers in me ? sixteen years in the mountains and a Ph. D? How do they co-relate? He says, "After the kind of training I had from my guru, I grasp things with ease. Now I read books and get doctorates."

The pair is obviously in perfect sync with each other. He recounts, "Films happened to me when I met Bhumika. She told me to produce movies and the very next day I launched a production house, Down Town." The company has a Bollywood film in the pipeline with Rahul Bose, Kim Sharma and Bhumika in it. Closer home, DownTown is producing Yagam and Thakita Thakita.

SHE'S LAIDBACK, HE?S A WORKAHOLIC

Is it tough to make their marriage work since she is a star? She says, "Bharat is so caring and loving. We are different in the way we work?he is a workaholic and I take breaks for days on end. I balance between being laidback and working hard. In my ten year old career I have had just 16 releases and I am happy about it. Bharat is a charmer. I love him for who he is and not because he is a spiritual guru or whatever. Maybe we have serious discussions once in a while but I don't go very deep into the spiritual quest. I see God and spirituality in a day-to-day format. It is all about being happy and making people laugh."

Bhumika is an avid reader and likes Paulo Coelho, especially The Winner Stands Alone. Though you may be grounded, success can be like tasting blood, you want more of it." She herself is soon coming out with a book, a collection of poems. "It is about human emotions and is written in a very simple style. I have been writing ever since I was in class four." As for her other interests, one of them is, surprisingly, collecting coins! "Yes, I have a huge coin collection of one and two paisas. It can be auctioned for a crore now," she laughs. "I like taking time off. I enjoy any place which has mountains and trekking." Keeping things simple, that explains why Bharat and Bhumika are soul mates.