This is a trip down nostalgia lane. It`s also a nod at the present.

It`s a story that veers from the glorious heydays of Raj Kapoor Productions to PT V`s golden years, to present day TV and cinema. It`s also a conversation with one of Pakistan entertainment`s most revered actresses. She is known for being a tad elusive about interviews, having long opted to take a backseat from the flash-bang of show business, preferring to observe from a vantage point rather than join the fray.

When she does decide to meet for an interview, though, Zeba Bakhtiar is absolutely honest, very upfront and often regaling. She is also very wise, speaking from the experiences collated over many years, the conversation drifting from her smash-hit Bollywood debut more than three decades ago to the highs and lows of her personal life.

In all these years, perhaps the one adjective that has almost always been associated with Zeba Bakhtiar is `beautiful`. She is, certainly, beautiful porcelain doll-like with impeccable taste in clothes and a smile that lights up her face and makes you want to smile right back.

I choose this particular tangent to break the ice with her: her beauty may have helped her in getting cast in certain roles she is, after all, `khush rung Henna` [brightly coloured Henna]! but did it also sometimes act as an obstacle, restricting her from enacting characters that were perhaps grittier? `Yes, there was a time in my career when I wanted to do parallel cinema, but no one would cast me,` she says. `They would tell me that my looks wouldn`t suit the character of a poor girl! I felt that I would never be able to land certain kinds of roles.

`In this profession, beauty does count and we have to accept that when we watch TV, we tend to like watching good-looking people. Over time, I realised that I was blessed. I got to be part of some very special projects that fell into the category of commercial cinema and TV back then. And I did even end up playing some gritty roles! Another descriptor frequently associated with her is `Raj Kapoor heroine`, alluding to her lead role in the 1991 Bollywood release, Henna. She smiles. `It is a huge honour and a privilege. It`s like being associated with a certain institution and the time that I spent on that set and all that I learnt, I later applied throughout my career.

KHUSH RUNG HENNA We spiral back in time to her Henna days a time that she must have recalled in umpteen interviews but which intrigues me, nonetheless. She was possibly one of the very first Pakistani artists to work across the border, and that too as the lead in a major movie, for a major production house. How did they connect with her? `From what I have been told, Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey had a copy of a drama that I had acted in for PTV Karachi centre, called Anarkali, and he showed it to Raj Kapoor sahib. I think that Haseena [Moin] Apa was writing the dialogues for Henna around the same time and she also spoke to Raj Kapoor about me.

`He was busy getting the script ready around this time, figuring out every detail from the music to the colours of our costumes. And then, in the middle of all this, Raj Kapoor sahib passed away. It was like he had prepared this movie and left it to his son Randhir Kapoor to carry out his vision! She continues, `Then one day, Haseena Apa called me. This was right after Anarkali. I was shooting a TV serial in London for London Weekend Television, and an Indian actor that I met there had told me to go meet a major Bollywood producer who was in town. I went to meet him but, somehow, things didn`t work out. I had certain parameters, regarding what to wear and what kind of characters I could play, and we couldn`t click. I came back to the hotel and, as I walked into my room, the phone was ringing. It was Haseena Apa, telling me to fly down to Bombay [Mumbai] for a screen-test! It was just meant to be, I comment, and she nods.

`Yes, but at that time, I was incredulous. My father [former attorney general Yahya Bakhtiar] was a politician in Pakistan and he had so far allowed me to work on Pakistani television and in London, but I wasn`t sure if he would let me go to India.

`Haseena Apa told me that she would handle it. She was such a respected name and, when she told my father that she was taking me with her, he agreed. My mother and I went, and at that time we were just going for the screen-test and visiting India because we had never been there before. On the third day of the screen-test, I was asked to sign on to the movie. And I just thought, now what am I going to tell Daddy? `It was very exciting, literally. I have a British passport because my mother is European and we assumed that we wouldn`t need a visa to travel to India.

We boarded the flight from Karachi, landed in Bombay and, once we were there, we were told that we needed visas! Randhir was there to pick us up from the airport and we waited in the airport lounge while he went off and got our visas arranged within two hours.

Our story proceeds to the hallowed grounds of the RK Studio: `We were taken to a hotel and, in the evening, we visited RK Studio,` recalls Zeba. `It was an amazing place. This is where all the Raj Kapoor films had been made, from Barsaat to all the other mega-blockbusters. A large part of the history of Indian cinema had emerged from this camp and it was all here the posters, the costumes preserved in this studio.

To see all this and then to work there every day, to be adopted by this and become part of it, was very special.

She was also a Rishi Kapoor heroine. `I was the 16th new heroine that he had worked with!` Zeba informs Icon. `He was such a dedicated professional. It was awe-inspiring just to watch him slip into character. He was also very knowledgeable, knew everything about the latest filters, the latest lighting techniques.

Henna, of course, fit right in with her do`s and don`ts related to acting. `Yes, because I was playing a Pakistani Kashmiri girl, and so there was nothing to worry about.

THE BOLLYWOOD ASSOCIATION But while Zeba may not have been worried, there were others needlessly worrying for her: journalists in Pakistan who were adamant that now that she had signed on to an Indian film, she was going to be seen in `inappropriate` scenes.

`The two years that I was shooting Henna, the press at home gave me a lot of flak what you would call `trolling` in this day and age. I was constantly told that we know that you are going to shoot something offensive.

Ultimately, I stopped offering them explanations. I told them that when the movie gets released, you can decide for yourself. Don`t judge me before time.

Once Henna released, it truly did turn out to be a crowning moment for her. I am curious: present-day artists often make the caustic observation that they have only been appreciated in Pakistan once they have made their mark internationally. Was this the case back then too? `This has always been the case,` she says. `Here, in Pakistan, we are obsessed with imports. But the time at which I started working had been a time of change. The country had just emerged from Gen Zia`s regime and our TV and film industries were just resurfacing. It was at this time that I did Henna and then acted in Sargam in Pakistan. I think my work was noticed overall.

Was it a more politically stable time, with less red-tape involved in allowing a Pakistani artist to work in Bollywood? `There was always political red tape but, yes, there was at least a night from Karachi to Bombay,` she says. `I would constantly be flying back and forth, rushing back home if I had a few days off from shooting. You could also get a visa to travel to India from Pakistan. But even back then, I would get banned in India every few weeks.

Somebody would make a controversial statement, there would be political tensions and I would discover that I was banned.

She recalls, `I was in India during the Bombay riots. I had a late-night night and I was shooting at a studio. When I got done, the studio driver told me that we wouldn`t be able to make it to the airport because there were dead bodies strewn on the roads. I ended up taking a night the following day.

`At the same time, the people that I was working with, the producers, were always protective about me. They always looked out for me and were proud to own that I was the heroine of their movie.` She adds, `Similarly, the people that I have worked with here have also always treated me as their own.

Despite this, her Bollywood career, post-Henna, did not take off. Was this because most other Bollywood movies didn`t fit into the particular template that she was comfortable with? `Yes, I did work in a few more films in India, but it wasn`t the same. And how could it be? They weren`t being produced by the Raj Kapoor camp! I actually had to refuse about 15, 16 films because the script would be good and then, suddenly, there would be this one scene which would be objectionable.

At least, I would find it objectionable.

And that scene could not be removed. If there was a rain song with the heroine wearing a white sari, it was there for sure, and I couldn`t do it.

ON HOME-GROUND And so, she turned her focus homewards. What does she think has been her most successful project, to date? `I can`t single out one,` she justifiably says. `Henna was iconic. So was Tansen, so was Sargam. Syed Noor had the vision to make Sargam at a time when Pakistani cinema had completely died. People gave him a really tough time while he was shooting it, telling him that it would never work. But he persisted, putting in so much attention to detail. The music was beautiful and I even had a proper make-up artist, Masarrat Misbah, creating my looks for me rather than the usual make-up teams that would be on sets.

She continues, `Tansen was the one and only project to be created under the banner of the Pakistan Television Academy. The academy was supposed to continue working on more productions, but it never happened.

Haseena Apa had written the script and created this world but it was difficult shooting a period play with limited resources.

`There were no sets, no vanity vans. We would go from place to place, finding historic sites where we could film. My producer for Tansen, Khawaja Najmul Hassan, would call me when I would be in India, shooting for Henna, as I was working on both projects simultaneously, and ask me to bring back certain costumes because he couldn`t find them in Pakistan! Despite having worked with some of the most illustrious names in the Pakistani entertainment industry, she eventually left acting. Why? `I wanted to do good work. And when I stopped getting inspired by the scripts that were coming to me, I left acting,` she says. `I just wasn`t getting any satisfaction from the work I was doing.

FAMILY MATTERS So she didn`t leave because she wanted to spend more time with her family, particularly her son Azaan Sami Khan? `I don`t think I left acting around the time that Azaan was born. That was the time around which I tried my hand at being behind the camera, which was something that I had always wanted to do,` she says.

`Still, Azaan was always a priority for me. Around the time at which he was born, people would comment on how my career would fade because it was felt that heroines couldn`t have kids. I would look at them and say that it depended on what your priorities were.

For me, it was far more important to be a mother than a heroine.

She must have heard similar comments when she got married to Adnan Sami Khan back in the day it was perceived that a heroine could only be a success for as long as she remained single. `Of course, people can be very cruel. They felt that it was their right to even stop you on the road and make intrusive comments about your personal life, because you were in their house every day, on their TV screens.

She pauses. `I have always been very family-oriented and, for me, it was much more important to have children.

I saw some very great actresses who were top-tier heroines but ended up crossing a certain point in their lives without getting married or having children. I found that very frightening.

I didn`t want that for myself.

Aside from motherhood, marriage must have been on her mind also? `See, before my career started, I did get married. It ended within a year. At19, I was divorced,` she says. `Then I started my career and, around the time I wrapped up Henna, I was diagnosed with diabetes. It scared me, because no one in my family had diabetes and I didn`t want it to pose difficulties for me when I would have children. Marriage seemed like the logical next step.

`I had already gotten a taste of Bollywood, acted in Sargam and I wasn`t sure that I wanted to spend the rest of my life just acting. I wanted to do meaningful work but the projects that I was doing were more like candy-floss, with me dressing up, looking pretty and maybe getting to perform challenging scenes for two days in a 30-day acting spell. Having a baby excited me much more.

Having already endured a difficult marriage, she wasn`t hesitant about marrying again? `Adnan and I were friends, so I didn`t expect things to go wrong,` she says.

Unfortunately, things did go wrong and the emotional turmoil that she must have experienced during her divorce and subsequent custody battle for Azaan was amplified thanks to perpetual media scrutiny. How did she deal with that particular phase of her life? `It was mentally very painful,` she agrees, `and God just helps you cope.

You know your own truth, regardless of what the papers are saying. If my pain was giving them entertainment, if it was a party piece for them, then that`s just who they were. My faith gave me strength.

I broach another question: did she consider remarrying? She laughs.

`Now I am not going to make a filmi statement like because I was a mother, I couldn`t consider remarrying. If I had met a decent man who I thought was appropriate, I would have re-married.

But I didn`t.

Moving forward to the present-day, with Azaan`s career on the rise, does she offer him guidance? `I do read all the scripts that come his way! she reveals. `I insist upon it, because I enjoy reading scripts. Some are very enjoyable too.

Does she think that Azaan can balance his burgeoning acting career with his work as a musician? `Why not? Azaan also wrote the screenplay for the movie Superstar, so that`s another one of his interests. As long as he remains sincere to everything that he does, I think that he`ll be able to manage.

Does she still get acting offers? `On and off,` she smiles, `but so far, it hasn`t been something interesting.

She stepped away from uninteresting roles back when her career was at its peak. There`s no reason she would settle for them now.