Evolution of an actor, Suvinder Vicky shows the way

Ivan Ayr

IT was in January of 2020, about a month before we were slated to start production on our project ‘Meel Patthar’ (Milestone), when I first met Suvinder Vicky. Our meeting took place in a small flat, tucked away in the labyrinth of central Delhi, which was my temporary residence as well as a makeshift pre-production office — that’s independent films for you! There was a palpable excitement among some in the production team. His warm greetings had rendered many of them star-struck.

He had arrived in the Shatabdi from Chandigarh to meet me, making the most of a day’s respite from his current commitments that were slated to wrap up in a week’s time. I was delighted to meet him, my producer probably even more so, having done the bulk of the hard work to bring him on board. Yet, at the back of my mind was this race against time, the urgency to bring him up to speed with the character and his world.

Suvinder was to play Ghalib, a seasoned truck driver, a role that required him to manoeuvre a behemoth he had never seen and the likes of which he had never driven before. Though I’m not an actor myself, I can well imagine the arduous task to shed the skin of your last character and don a new one. To switch gears, so to speak. To alter the tone, appearance, body language, and even one’s mind. Moreover, given the contrast between mainstream commercial entertainment and the world of more nuanced, artistically expressive narratives, this shift can sometimes be impossible, and I must have been conscious of this challenge as I wasted no time in pulling him into this world by bringing up his performance in Gurvinder Singh’s ‘Chauthi Koot’ (2014), in my estimation one of the best Punjabi films ever made. I distinctly remember revisiting a poignant scene and being immediately struck by Suvinder’s ability to recall the dialogues with the same gravity, more than six years later. It was remarkable. My approach seemed to have worked better than I had anticipated. His eagerness helped dissolve some of my anxiety about the limited time we had.

Suvinder returned a week later, as ready as he was during our first encounter. I wanted him to train on the same truck he would be driving in the film, an ageing TATA 1613, whose raucous engine and stubborn transmission, as cooperative as a mule, made this mechanical dinosaur an extremely uncomfortable ride. With a combination of amusement and admiration, I watched as he grappled with the unruly steering wheel, adopting the casual swagger of a seasoned truck driver, coaxing smiles and chuckles from our trainer, Azhar, as well.

His constant battle with the transmission added a touch of hilarity to our intense preparations. The truck, it seemed, was not merely a prop, but an unsuspecting co-star in Suvinder’s transformative journey.

We started the shoot during the peak of the North Indian winter, with most scenes slated for the golden hour of dawn. That, compounded with long single takes, often meant rehearsing through the cold nights, perfecting every nuance of staging and movement for each scene. Looking back, I feel that through all the trials and tribulations, I saw Suvinder blossoming into the character with a grace that was both powerful and subtle — like a butterfly gradually spreading its wings and floating across those 24 frames per second.

On the second-last day of the shoot, we found ourselves in the same car, retreating back to our hotel after another marathon night of shoot. He was quietly peering out of the window. I asked him how he was feeling, joking that things often make no sense during production. He smiled back, and in his tranquil manner, likened his position to observing varied strokes against a grand canvas while being on the other side of it, unable to see the emerging image, but patiently waiting for the painting to come to life.

In his newly premiered Netflix series ‘Kohrra’, where he’s donned the garb of a hardened cop, his most gifted attributes come to the fore once more. What strikes me most, as a director who’s witnessed his metamorphosis, is Suvinder’s faith in the narratives he portrays. His respect and trust in the story he’s part of is so profound that it envelops him, to the extent that every word on the page becomes sacred scripture.

It is this purity of approach that reflects in his performances, a glow that emanates from within, illuminating the characters he embodies. A glow that stays with audiences long after the credits roll.

The Graph Rises

From doing street plays with Theatre Arts group in Chandigarh to ‘Kohrra’, Suvinder Vicky’s career trajectory is a dream come true for any artiste. Hailing from Haryana’s Sirsa town, he pursued Masters in Arts from Panjab University’s Department of Indian Theatre. While he worked in a few Punjabi films, his first big break as lead actor was Gurvinder Singh’s ‘Chauthi Koot’, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. In Hindi films, he made an impact as the second lead in Akshay Kumar-starrer ‘Kesari’. The rise of OTT almost shot him to fame, with first the hit Amazon Prime series ‘Pataal Lok’, followed by the Netflix series ‘CAT’. Ever since ‘Kohrra’ dropped on Netflix, accolades have been coming in from the likes of Karan Johar and Hansal Mehta.

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