Charlie Rose interviews Shabana Azmi, March 2006

A reader in Portugal sent me a link to Shabana ji's appearance on the Charlie Rose show last year. This 22-minute interview is highly recommended viewing; it's a nice introduction both to Shabana the actor and Shabana the activist. I hope it will make plain at least some of the reasons that this blog exists.

Watch it here.

Some highlights:

• The discussion of Arth and Paar, while stock stuff of Shabana interviews, is always fun to hear.

• The description of the "commune" apartment in which Shabana ji's girlhood was spent. I heard a little about this in Kaifi aur main but my Urdu wasn't up to snuff and I didn't understand much of it.

• Shabana ji's comments about the Imam of Jama Masjid - especially that parachuting him into a war zone "would solve his problems as well as our own."

Please watch, and let me know what you think.