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Life comes a full circle
for Kher
"I’ve learnt the lesson of a lifetime from Om Jai Jagdish, he declares. "I realised the need to reinvent myself, learn to say no. After doing so much work, I feel I have lived not even up to 40 per cent of my potential. That is why I watch a lot of movies, read and do the kind of work I enjoy doing." Kher reveals that Sanghar, for which he is shooting currently, would be one of his last commitments towards mainstream Hindi cinema. He has had enough of "mindless potboilers" and would rather work in non-formula movies, besides act in plays and perhaps write a film script. He also keeps his passport handy. "You have to purify yourself by getting into the degradation," he reasons. "When you have too much of something, it becomes easy to shun. The mind wanders to newer areas and seeks out new challenges to set your creative juices running again. I feel I am going through that process." In effect, the angry, old
man of Saraansh is joining his friends from the New Wave —
Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Saeed Jaffrey... all of whom were driven by
pop cinema fatigue towards western productions, low-budget independent
productions and even theatre. |
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At one stage, he was called the "chameleon" for his ability to switch personas from the stem and sedate to uproariously funny to the menacingly villainous and the clever and crafty... to playing stock characters like the harassed father-in-law, hen-pecked husband, domineering elder brother and so on. All that would soon change. His current projects reflect his new bent of thought. He will star alongside Puri and Roshan Seth in Second Generation — a three-hour TV drama for the UK’s Channel 4. He plays a Bangladeshi Muslim, who arrives in Britain in the sixties and sets up a food business with two other Asians. Kher is also acting in Banana Brothers, a story about two footloose Indians in San Francisco. Besides, he is working with Delhi-based filmmaker Dibaker Sen in a film, Khosla ka Ghosla as its middle-class protagonist. "It was so refreshing to see a young filmmaker with a ready script," he quips. He has even done a script himself, on which he was to start work in October. Titled The Return, it is part autobiographical (inasmuch as it is "based on personal experiences in life") and revolves around the relationship a father and son share and the clash of male egos. "During a recent visit to London, I saw an old man sitting out in a roadside cafe," elaborates Kher. "He had come to the UK on his son’s insistence, but found himself lonely and cut off from his cultural roots. Every evening he visited the cafe to catch sight of some Indian faces. I realised, from our conversation that the father and son loved each other, but communication between them had long collapsed!" Apart from films, Kher is working in a play, Kuchh Bhi Ho Sakta Hai, which opens next month (April). It is a tragi-comic chronicle of his "personal disasters" and naturally, he would be playing himself. Also, it marks his almost return to the stage after Saalgirah, almost a decade ago. This is over and above his commitment towards his alma mater, the National School of Drama in Delhi of which he has been appointed chairman. He would also want to produce another film — after Bariwali (in Bengali), his first production venture turned out to be a runaway hit two years ago. MF |
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THE
failure of Om Jai Jagdish has been a "learning
experience" for Anupam Kher. Having worn countless masks as a
character actor for close to two decades, he felt he could take a shot
at direction. The debacle of his directorial debut has sent him back to
what he knows best — but on a different footing.