Some childhood memories never die. One of them is Rajit Kapur playing Byomkesh Bakshi in Basu Chatterjee’s interpretation of Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s popular fictional stories about the Bengali detective who loves to call himself the seeker of truth; many adaptations later, Kapur’s rendition of Bakshi remains the best.
And who can forget his experiments with truth as the young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in The Making of the Mahatma (1996)?
In both cases, he transcended factors like ethnicity and face value to make the characters his own. “I am very fortunate that these two roles still hold people’s interest,” says Kapur on the sets of Reloaded , the prequel to the Hrithik Roshan-Katrina Kaif-starrer Bang Bang (2014) . “I had already played Michael Madhusudan Dutt in the [television show] Yugantar when director Shubhankar Ghosh suggested my name to Basu Chatterjee.”
The director did all the scripting, translation and dialogues in advance. And gave Kapur the script of 20 episodes with dialogues in one go, adding that the actor would receive the next 13 very soon. “He made my job so easy that I just had to learn how to tie a dhoti. In television, we have moved ahead with technology but still we can’t think beyond two episodes.” It’s the absence of sound homework that keeps Kapur away from television. “You need to chew your food. If you swallow it, you won’t get the taste.”
As for Gandhi, Kapur says his mentor Shyam Benegal was convinced that he didn’t want to match his facial expressions with the young Father of Our Nation. “He wanted me to understand his mind and his actions, and said if I get them right people would forget about the lack of facial similarities,” he says.
At a time when there were watertight compartments between art and commercial films, Kapur was our lovable everyman riding on titles like Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda . When the walls were being broken, he snuck into the mainstream space and added weight to films like Ghulam .
Back on screen
After a lull, Kapur is back and says his hands are full. It is another matter that he is still not being challenged enough. The last instance was The Threshold , where he and Neena Gupta played a middle-aged couple who revisit their relationship after their son’s marriage. “A two-character film, it is very sensitive and beautifully made. I just hope many people get to see it,” says Kapur. “It brings out how a man can be insecure and why a wife has to spell out everything to be understood.” The actor says that the young director (Pushan Kriplani) and writer have worked very hard but unfortunately are not connected with industry honchos and entertainment wizards.
Marketing handicaps aside, Kapur feels acting has become more natural and better stories are coming out in the last five years. “Whatever be the budget of the film, if the story is not compelling and there is no emotional content to hold the viewer, it won’t work irrespective of who is in it and where it is filmed.”
He says filmmakers should realise the importance of giving the script to actors in advance. “Earlier a lot of scripting and dialogue writing was done on the sets. Now we are little more focussed. There is emphasis on pre-production work and many more filmmakers are being able to tell stories close to their heart.”
Theatre in his blood
And the lack of challenge in films pulls Kapur to theatre which he says, “flows in his bloodstream”. A recent example is his attempts to stage Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit in New Delhi. It is a unique theatrical experiment that provides an actor with the script once the curtains are drawn and the audience is seated. The play requires no set, no director and a different actor performs every time. Big names like John Hurt, Sinead Cusack and Ken Loach have attempted it. In India, Arundhati Nag has tried it.
“The challenge is you can’t do any preparation. You don’t know what are you expected to do. You are in an unknown territory. You have to make do with whatever presence of mind and experience you have,” he says. However, the actors attempting the production are offered basic instructions 48 hours prior to the performance. “They don’t guide you into what needs to be done on stage. It only says that you should be loud and clear so that the audience can hear you clearly.”
Historical roles
Without revealing much, Kapur let’s slip a few details about roles on the horizon. He confirms that he is playing Jawaharlal Nehru in Solar Eclipse , a Hollywood film that promises to present an alternative view of the events leading to the Partition. “It is a small role. It was not like I had to play Nehru for a month. But yes, I get to deliver his famous midnight speech.” Then he is playing a Muslim League leader in Begum Jaan .
On the ban on Pakistani artistes working in India, he says, “We could have asked the artistes to go back if the two countries were at war and diplomatic ties had been snapped. When the diplomatic ties are in place, why are we declaring war on the actor community?” He agrees with the Prime Minister’s view that there is difference between the government and the people of Pakistan because after all “artistes are ordinary people”. But could it be a start of something larger? “Then why are you starting with artistes? Just because they are easy targets as they are always in public eye?” he asks before rushing off for a shoot.
Filmmakers
should realise the importance of giving the script to actors in advance, says Kapur
