An Ordinary Life Page 16

  He had become great friends with Shweta Bhardwaj, an actress who had auditioned for Dev D (which did not work out; she then went on to act in another film called Mission Istanbul.) One evening, when they were having dinner at her place, she randomly commented, ‘Kaaliye ke saath kya kar rahe ho?’ (What are you doing with this black guy?) Anurag left instantly, right in the middle of dinner. He was deeply hurt by her words. When a director believes in you like this, how can you not give him beyond your best?

  ‘Isne to Nawaz jaise ko star bana diya!’ People think that if Anurag could make this ugly-looking guy, Nawaz, a star, he can make every fair-skinned Punjabi wannabe hero into a star as well. A lot of this crowd continues to stalk Anurag.

  What many people don’t know is that I was supposed to work with Anurag in Gulaal. We were both super excited about it. I was supposed to do the role of Bhati. The role required me to drive a jeep across Rajasthan. And so, promptly I enrolled in driving classes and mastered driving well before the shoot was to begin. I could barely control my emotions at the railway station where I was about to board a train to Jaipur for the shoot. The thrill of the role and the quenching of my endless thirst for work flooded every cell in my body with euphoria. That’s when someone called me, asking me not to come. I was flabbergasted. What was happening? Why was it happening? How could it have happened? I was dumbfounded. As the words slowly came to me, I stuttered, ‘But everything is set. Anurag himself asked me to come. And I’m right here, about to board the train.’

  ‘Nahin, nahin, don’t board it!’ the person said and hung up.

  Everything moved in slow motion. Railway stations can be such profound places. Entire lives can change there. I watched the heavy train leave the station and chug along to Jaipur with my dreams, leaving me behind at the station. Just a moment ago, I was in pure euphoria, and a moment later, in shock, sorrow, unable to comprehend what the fuck had just happened.

  Soon I discovered that I had been the victim of internal politics and that somebody had sabotaged me. Someone apparently told Anurag that Nawaz was asking for Rs 1.5 lakh when clearly I had not. Gulaal had an incredibly tight budget. We had agreed on Rs 1 lakh. This same person later told me that given the tight budget, my fees had been reduced to Rs 80,000 by Anurag. I didn’t believe him and told him that if Anurag had told me so directly, then I would have agreed. (Imagine having this conversation when you’re about to board your train for the shoot!)

  I hid in a dark cave of deep, deep depression and stayed there for a fortnight. Until Anurag found out what had happened. Immediately, he called and apologized profusely, several times. This kind of humanness, courtesy, especially in the context of this industry where nobody cares unless you’re a star, is one of those special things about Anurag.

  Some time later, he called me again and insisted that I come to Chandigarh. I was jaded. You know, how the saying goes: once bitten, twice shy. I really didn’t want to go but he insisted and cajoled until I finally agreed.

  It was only once I reached Chandigarh that I discovered that I was to be cast in an item song. Imagine! For ‘Emosanal Attyachar’, I donned an Elvis Presley costume, but the highlight was the uniquely heavy make-up. My face was whitened with way too much make-up, while the rest of my body remained its natural black hue. This make-up was integral to the character, being an ode to folk artists in the small towns of India who tend to do exactly this: overdo the ‘fairness’ of the face, while from the neck down, you can see their darker complexion. In Budhana, many performers tend to do this during functions, especially weddings. So it was very realistic.

  Before Dev D, even after it, we often talked about life and intimate matters; I remember asking his advice on whether I should get married or not. I was confused back then given the unpredictability of an actor’s life, his struggle and all the depression lurking around. Today, of course, we are both extremely busy and too pressed for time to hang out like in the old, carefree days. Our conversations are exclusively about work. But even today, I feel nobody quite understands me as deeply, as beautifully, as Anurag.

  19

  ‘The Drama King of India’

  I am deeply humbled that people consider me an outstanding actor. They say there is a khaas baat, something special, about Nawaz’s acting. As if performing an autopsy, they try to dissect my performances, trying to understand the method and put labels. But you see, the X factor that they are looking for comes not from me, but from my Tai Amma, from the dafliwala, from Sammi ki Ammi, from Abbu, from Ammi, from my people, from my land. On many days I consider myself to be the luckiest man alive that I had the privilege of encountering so many characters during my formative years. It is like a magician and his bag of tricks, a warrior and his weapons or a chef and his knives. So, I have these brilliant characters who have shaped me. They are archetypes I keep returning to and pour them out on the silver screen. If you look closely, you can see their echoes in every role I play.

  In Budhana we believe everything is a game of rawangi, of rhythm. We used to say, whoever is besura, out of sur, out of tune, is acceptable, he can be forgiven. But whoever is betaala, without a sense of taal, of rhythm, is unacceptable. Why? Because all of kainaat, all of creation, is made out of a certain sense of rhythm. Without that rhythm, it is irritating to the ears. You might utter the most beautiful words but if there is no flow, no rhythm in them, then people might not pay attention; in fact, they might even get offended or annoyed. However, if a person says the most mundane words about the most banal subjects, but with this rhythm, with rawangi, people will be touched. Tai Amma had that leh, that rhythm, in every word she said, in every gesture she made.

  This rhythm is the secret of the universe. It is the secret of good art, good cinema that you can lose yourself in. This is also probably why irrespective of the language, I never need subtitles to watch a film. If I lose myself in reading the subtitles, how will I lose myself in the magic of the film? Even if it is a difficult film, I will stubbornly refuse to read the subtitles. Then I will simply read the film’s synopsis which means I already know the subject and the character’s conflict.

  Today, most of us have lost the rhythm that exists naturally in all of us. In the cities there is no space for vulnerability. Consequently, we have lost one of our most precious treasures: innocence. People have hidden themselves behind walls of cardboard, sometimes even harder walls made of wood, from all sides. So they cannot see who they really are. I am no exception, but the only difference between them and me is that I know I have boxed myself in, that the key is in my hand and that I know when to use it. Fortunately, there is still some innocence left in the villages of India. And because of this I find inspiration only in the village.

  It is rather rare but sometimes I get extraordinarily lucky and find inspiration in the city too. My character in The Lunchbox, a charming, ever-smiling orphan called Shaikh, is the perfect example of this. In the film he would always come up and say to Saajan Fernandes—who was played by Irrfan Khan—with a beaming smile, ‘Kaise hain, sir?’ (How are you?) If you met my good friend Mukesh Bhatt, who also happens to be an actor, you will realize within minutes that I had poured his entire demeanour into the character of Shaikh.

  Mukesh was my roommate in Mira Road. In the morning when I would head downstairs from my flat to the paan shop for my first cigarette of the day, I’d find him already there, surrounded by a little cloud of smoke.

  ‘Arrey, sir! How are you, sir?’ Instantly he would greet me with a warm smile while puffing away.

  Behenchod, we just met minutes ago upstairs. What is this greeting for?’ I’d retort.

  ‘Arrey, sir. But whenever people meet, they say hi-hello or not?’ he would explain innocently. ‘Kalte hain na? Kalte hain na?’ (Right, right?) He would ask the rhetorical question with his adorable slight stammer.

  Really, every single time we met, he would greet me just like Shaikh did in the film.

  We were five of us living together in that tiny room in Mira Road. I
n one corner of the room, atop a little shelf was a small idol of Ganpati Baba. Every morning after his shower, Mukesh would emerge from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, droplets still on his body, and head straight to the idol. He would quickly utter some mantras, parts of which he knew but most of which he had forgotten. He would fill up those blanks with melodious sound effects like tana-nana and conclude them with a very energetic hoooollllll! He was from Bihar, and like many Biharis, he too had a tough time pronouncing the rolling ‘r’ sounds correctly, so there would be a cute, childlike lisping of the ‘l’ sound instead. His stammering also included a range of several other strong phonic Hindi alphabets, which a lot of people struggle to pronounce.

  His final mantra went something like:

  Tana-nana tana-nana Ganpati Bappa

  Tana-nana tana-nana tana-nana

  Hooooollllll!

  Tana-nana tana-nana Ganpati Bappa.

  Tana-nana tana-nana tana-nana

  Hooooollllll!

  By the time The Lunchbox released I had moved out, and into my new place at Yari Road. Many people sent me messages appreciating my performance, saying things like ‘Very good, Nawaz’, or ‘You did an awesome job, Nawaz’. Mukesh too sent me a text, which stood out of this crowd of applause.

  ‘I saw Lunchbox. Thank you.’ Obviously, it was curt because he knew that this behenchod Nawaz had totally taken his case and caricatured him.

  Soon after The Lunchbox was released Mukesh got offered a role in a TV serial. Delighted, he went to the shoot, gave a shot in which he played a postman riding a bicycle and handing out mail. And confidently, in his trademark warm, polite style and cute lisp, delivered the dialogue: ‘Namaskar, Dadiji. Yahan se guzar laha tha toh socha aapki chitthi deta chaloon.’ (Greetings, Granny. I was passing by, so thought I’d deliver your letter to you.)

  ‘Cut!’ the director screamed abruptly.

  ‘What happened, sir?’ asked Mukesh, surprised.

  ‘Do it again,’ said the director.

  ‘All right,’ said Mukesh.

  He mounted the bicycle again, rode down the street, rang the doorbell, the grandmother emerged, he handed her the letter and delivered the same dialogue again with his typical stutter.

  ‘Cut!’ again the director interrupted.

  ‘What happened, sir?’ the baffled actor asked the director.

  ‘Do it again, yaar. Don’t do all this.’

  ‘Don’t do what all, sir?’ Mukesh asked.

  ‘All this. Don’t do all this. Nawaz has already done all this in Lunchbox,’ the director explained as if it was the most obvious thing. ‘Nawaz has already done this character, yaar. Why are you repeating it? Why are you copying him? You leave it. You don’t do this, please. Do something else, please.’

  Mukesh remains a struggling actor. About two years ago, I was driving in my car when I saw him standing at Aaram Nagar. My heart melted instantly at the sight of my old friend. I asked the driver to stop the car and got out.

  ‘Arrey, Mukesh, yaar! How are you, my buddy?’ I greeted him with a broad smile, my hand grabbing his arm.

  ‘Arrey, choliye, choliye (leave, leave),’ he responded in anger, removing my arm.

  ‘Aapne kab ma–behen ki kadar ki? Aapne toh meri ma–behen sab ek kar di!’ (You have totally screwed me up. Fuck off!)

  ‘Maine kahan ma–behen ek kar di? Kya kiya maine? (What did I do?),’ I asked, bewildered as to what I had done for him to react like this.

  ‘Of course, you have. Wherever I go, people say don’t do that character. Don’t play that. What the fuck! What the hell have you done? This is not done. This is no way!’

  ‘Okay, Mukesh. I will meet you later,’ I said timidly, chickening out and fleeing the uncomfortable scene.

  During the days of struggle, one day, around 2008, we walked into a film production office for a role. It had the actress Tabu playing the lead role. The director needed two police constables. When he saw us, he was very impressed because we already looked like stereotypical havildars. ‘Very good, very good,’ he said. ‘Now improvise a little scene for me and you two have an excellent chance of bagging the role.’

  The scene was about the two of us living in the Thane police station itself, with our buffaloes tied up nearby. We cook our food there. We have washed our clothes and hung them out to dry on a clothes line. A woman would walk in, this would be the character played by Tabu, and she would ask the two constables the way to the police station. ‘In the end you must say the dialogue: “Take a left, then another left and another left from there and you will reach.” But before that, improvise however you want, build the scene however you want. You two are actors, so you know how to do this,’ the director said.

  I stood there, taking it all in and trying to understand what I should do. Meanwhile, Mukesh went to a corner and squatted.

  ‘What are you doing, Mukesh?’

  ‘Didn’t the director ask us to improvise? I am milking my buffalo,’ he stammered.

  ‘What should I do?’ I asked.

  ‘How would I know? Aap toh National School of Drama se hain. Mele se kyon pooch lahe hain. Aap kalo jo bhi kalna hai. (You are from the National School of Drama. Why are you asking me? You do whatever you want to do),’ he lisped cutely.

  Meanwhile, the camera was ready and the director appeared asking us if we were.

  ‘Yes, sir! Ready!’ we chorused.

  ‘Action!’ the director said.

  ‘Mele bhains ko danda kyon mala? Mele bhains ko danda kyon mala?’ (Why did you hit my buffalo with a stick? Why did you hit my buffalo with a stick?) Mukesh began singing and acting as if he was milking a buffalo.

  I simply stood there wondering what to do.

  ‘Where is this buffalo of yours, Mukesh? I cannot see any around,’ I asked.

  ‘It is here. I am miming,’ he replied.

  ‘What will I do?’ I asked.

  ‘You do whatever you want,’ he said.

  ‘If you can milk an invisible buffalo, then I suppose I too can do anything,’ I thought out aloud.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘All right, Mukesh, open your mouth,’ I said. He opened his mouth and I made a gesture of putting something inside it.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Sugar, tea leaves and a bit of your buffalo’s milk,’ I said. ‘All prepared on the stove over there,’ I said, pointing to an empty corner.

  By now, the director had had enough of this nonsense.

  ‘You motherfuckers! Stop wasting our time. Is this your preparation? Is this your improvisation?’ he shouted angrily. ‘Get lost, you motherfuckers. Get out now!’ We ran out of the office and into the street, afraid that he might hurl something at us.

  Those days we used to walk long distances. We walked for so long that we reached Juhu. All the while we did not utter a single word to each other. Our silence was fermenting with tension.

  ‘What happened, Mukesh?’ I said, finally breaking the silence.

  ‘Mele ma–behen kalne pe tule ho aap!’ he screeched.

  ‘Arrey? How did I? How did I fuck you up?’

  ‘Arrey! Couldn’t you have assumed at least?’

  ‘Assumed what?’ I asked.

  ‘When we rehearse and somebody pretends to hand you a cup of tea, we assume that there is a real cup of tea, right? We assume there is.’ He was furious.

  ‘Aap assume nahin kal sakte?’ (Why can’t you assume?)

  ‘I am sorry, yaar,’ I told him earnestly.

  The reason Shaikh was so adorable was because Mukesh is. Acting is really that simple. You merely observe the spirit of the person beyond its totality and then portray it on screen. A human being is not really as complicated as we make him out to be. There are a few basic elements which pain him, which move him, you remove one or two of them and he is happy. Life is a game of these few fundamentals as a result of which, acting is as well. The rest are decorative details.

  My character Tehmur in Talaash
is a rehash of my own brother Ayaz’s, who I have been observing with intense attention for years, and continue to even today whenever I go to Budhana. People think I worked so incredibly hard on that character. Not at all. Most of the time, I am simply copying the colourful characters I have known in real life. For many people, the most compelling role I have played so far has been that of Khan, the aggressive Intelligence Bureau official in Kahaani. However, it is a simple rehash of a person in real life—my cousin, my tau’s son.

  Initially, when I am just introduced to the role I’ll be playing, then yes, I am certainly a little clumsy and out of sync. Then as you try to get into the shoes of the character, into the unconscious mind of the character, you slowly begin to get better. And as soon as you are able to get into the spirit, the very essence of the character and make it your own, you get into an incredible flow. The gestures and the postures of the character become yours. The voice becomes yours. And once this initial physicality has been taken care of, you get into the heart and soul and psyche of the character. You go so deep that you can easily predict what he will do next. You even know what the character is thinking in his free moments.

  But then come the lessons I learnt working with so many directors in theatre—you must not prepare for the character at an emotional level. You have to try to understand the politics, the chaalbaazi, of the character. What does this guy really want? How can he use some jugaad to improvise a situation? What are his survival tactics? As an actor, your characterization should be to the level that you must know how this guy sits in the toilet. And for how long he sits there. How does he sleep? You understand the character like you know yourself, ideally even better than you know yourself. That is the moment when you know you have truly grasped the character.

  Like Robert De Niro did in the film Raging Bull where he played the boxer Jake LaMotta so brilliantly. De Niro took permission from LaMotta to stay with him for four months to do exactly this. The director Martin Scorsese agreed to pay LaMotta. De Niro used to sleep next to him, wake up with him, have breakfast with him and even watch LaMotta in the bathroom. By the end of about three months, LaMotta was completely pissed off. He could not take it any more. Actually so was De Niro’s situation too. Both of them had become fed up of each other. Forget behaving exactly like each other, when LaMotta had a thought, De Niro too had the same thought at the same time. They had become so completely in sync that it had become claustrophobic. At the end of the third month, LaMotta told De Niro: ‘Motherfucker, get the fuck out of my life.’