Celina Jaitley has just returned from Egypt where she won an award at the Cairo International Film Festival for her work on Love Has No Language. “Going back to the banks of the river Nile was the best thing which happened to me,” she says, “I am happy that the movie has reached audiences all across the world.”
Celina has been in reflective mood lately, thinking about how her transient background as the daughter of a military man forced her to become self-reliant at an early age. “I never thought that the journey which I began in Calcutta would take me to places like this,” she acknowledges, “I learnt things like how to stay on my own, how to earn, how to pay for my house… I learnt everything in Calcutta. Times were hard, but I always used to think that something bigger was going to happen.”
Celina is also hoping that she will soon be offered some more substantial films rather than the throwaway masala comedies she’s been making recently. In particular, she’d really like to do a Bengali movie. “Bipasha gets to do a film with Rituparno Ghosh,” she adds, “Raima does so many films. Soha gets offers. I don’t know why I am never given an opportunity. Maybe they don’t know that I can speak in Bengali. Maybe they think that a Celina Jaitley wouldn’t do such films. I have been wanting to do a Bengali film for so long. I have always considered myself a Bengali, a Calcutta girl.”
