NEVER THE GARDEN VARIETY

Veteran Delhi actor Sushma Seth is one of the few to have straddled theatre, television and Bollywood. Ahead of her conversation at the Habitat Centre, TMS catches her at home as she looks back on her journey, and her attachment for the stage where it all started.

- PANKIL JHAJHRIA

LONG before she became a household name with India's first soap opera, Hum Log, Sushma Seth was a young girl staging plays in her garden, casting her siblings, directing them, and performing for family and neighbours.

Having grown up in a joint family in the capital city, the veteran actor remembers collecting props from home, and staging small plays with the assistance of older family members. "I always loved acting and music," Seth adds. Soon enough, the young girl's talent was noticed her uncle, Maheshwar Dayal, wrote two plays for her. One of them was performed on the Regal cinema's stage.

A scholarship eventually took Seth to Briarcliffe College in New York, where she studied drama. Seth was ecstatic that the course included acting, direction, stagecraft, voice training, set and costume design.

She was cast in all the important roles, was president of the student council, and crowned May Queen.

The Dean raised a scholarship for Sushma to transfer to Carnegie Mellon University, one of the top drama schools in the US, where she also performed and toured with a children's theatre company. "After four years, I returned to India.

And within a fortnight, I was offered a play," she tells TMS.