'I found the lump myself, I wasn't shattered'

"People were making vacation plans for the next year and I wouldn't even buy flight tickets for the next week," says Gautami Tadimalla, 48, without losing her calm for a moment.

"It took me time to accept the permanence of life and plan for the future," she adds. Poise in the time of grit is perhaps the most defining character she has been associated with, in the industry and outside. A breast cancer survivor, Gautami was diagnosed with the disease at 35. Now, 13 years later, she is back in the industry with renewed rigour, a new attitude to life and a more refined process to her craft.

SCREEN BEGINNINGS

In a liberal family of doctors from Bengaluru, a radiation oncologist father and a radiologist mother, Gautami grew up with no dreams of being on the silver screen. Becoming a doctor was a natural career plan and deviated only when her father suggested taking up engineering instead. "It was a time when the medical field was in a state of flux and knowing my temperament, my father suggested I try something else," she says. Fate had other plans and her first offer came while she was in Hyderabad for admission counselling, through a relative. "It was a film on the life of St Paul and Vijayachander thought I would be perfect for a small cameo role," she says. However, the process was set in motion and before she knew it, 16 year old Tadimalla had the industry calling for her.

The pictures and footage was being seen in the labs during post production and word had spread about the arrival of a new actor. People began asking and soon, offers began pouring in. After much deliberation, she decided to give the big bad world of Kollywood a shot and only because she liked the production house's approach.

"They told my mother that I could be on the first flight back home if I felt the slightest discomfort," she says. The film was Guru Sishyan, 1988, and one that she is still remembered for even decades later. It was during her second film, Enga Ooru Kavalkaran, 1988, that she knew she had chosen a career path that was cut out for her.

"There was something about the camera that lit me up. The places and