Is Hyderabad boy Vijay Varma really badass?

Four years is a long time in Bollywood. Its been that long since Monsoon Shootout (MS) showed at Cannes at a midnight screening in a packed auditorium. In the end, the 2,000 strong audience just wouldn't stop applauding this story of a cop faced with the dilemma of whether he should/shouldn't shoot an accused, on the first day of his job.

Which is why it feels odd MS did not get the kind of launch or run it was expected to on its India release loooonnnng after many of its actors have gone on to become well-known names and faces in their own right. Nawazuddin Siddiqui who has moved into the big league stayed away from the promotions of this film where he clearly doesn't go far out of his own comfort zone, playing a merciless criminal who roams around with a hammer. No prizes there for detecting a strong hangover of Raman Raghav 2.0. Neeraj Kabi keeps a tight leash on his act to keep it from going OTT and comes across as reasonably good and Tannishtha Chatterjee and Geetanjali Thapa have really tiny roles.

The actor who stays with you long after MS is over is Vijay Varma. That he manages to outshine everyone else in the film despite being the kind of actor he is is a testament to his craft. This is a face that barely registers but you talk about his character and that's another ball game altogether. There is a whole smorgasbord of emotions Varma portrays: love, guilt, helplessness, anger, remorse, grief and pain imbuing each with so much conviction that his character stays with the viewer long after.

Varma's last outing on the big screen was the Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu starrer Pink where he played a menacing molester giving you the heebie-jeebies. This playing on my mind when he walks into the suburban deli where I am meeting him.

The round steampunks and maroon full-sleeved tee he's wearing when he ambles in are hardly menacing. If anything they give off a geeky vibe of someone sizing you up even as you try to get into his mind. “I get that a lot,” laughs Varma after ordering his cappuccino which he leaves untouched till the end and downs sans sugar in the end in one gulp. “My director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury had told me people should want to come and beat you up for what you do after watching Pink. I'm glad Ankit Malhotra's character worked. You know when it was first explained to me, I just shrugged and said ok. But on the day of the shoot, I realised the immense repugnance in what I am doing and it left me really rattled,” he explains.

And how did he do it then? “Well, you just channelise the beast within. We all carry him inside us. One just needs the space, authority and power to unleash it,” he says and adds, “It's like as an actor you have to become this crazy person who has no moral filters. Thankfully actors a return ticket back to the real world,” guffawing.

He calls the MS release as life coming full circle. “This was the first film I was offered soon after I passed FTII. After the response at Cannes, I thought that I'd arrived and could take off from there. Unfortunately, the four years since we came back from that screening I kept waiting. I got desperate, frustrated, angry, sad and finally dejected. I wanted the world to see what I thought was a showcase of my talent. It would help me so that I don't have to prove myself all over again,” he recounts the hurt in his voice quite obvious.

But that's what he was finally forced to do. “I started out all over again and began looking for work. That's when I realised, unlike Amit Kumar who had reposed trust in me and cast me as lead when I was a novice not everyone saw me as lead material. But I needed work and I decided to take on whatever good came my way.”

Priyadarshan's Rangrezz and Satish Kaushik's Gang of Ghosts brought him both visibility and acclaim but it was 2016's sleeper hit Pink that made both audiences and filmmakers sit and take notice. While admitting its more fun playing edgy, unpredictable characters who are not “all goody-good,” he says he understands the danger of getting typecast. “After Pink, everyone wanted me to be a molester who uses cuss words, has a nasty negative attitude and a mean vibe. After a point, I had to plain refuse.”

“We are doing our best to lure audiences to the theatre and once they come there we know they will like the film but there is also this anxiety of pushing film without any known faces backing it. That can be daunting and cause anxiety.”

The fame and recognition that has come his way for doing a fiction short Counterfeit Kunkoo (by Reema Sengupta) which is India's entry to Sundance this year have come as a salve he admits.

Born into a Hyderabad Marwari family, Varma says his family was not only filmy but against anything filmy. “One was expected to pass Class X and if one didn't there was the family business to run.” Since he was the brighter kid in the family who got 50% marks he was allowed to go to college. “I got admission in a BCom course since that's what Marwaris do,” he laughs hysterical. “To stay off my father's radar I got jobs trying sell mobile plans in Idea Cellular, petrol cards in
Bharat Petroleum. I tried my hand at a call centre too and gave it up in one night.”

When he applied to FTII and got in he had run into a wall with his parents. He found a friend to fund him and left for Pune after telling his dad who was travelling on the phone.

He says his family has reconciled to his acting career though his Dad has been grudging in acceptance. Maybe his next Telugu film which is being released imminently will change that. Middle-Class Abbayi has Varma in a negative role again. “The director saw Pink and in the theatre told his assistant, this is my villain.”

To make it that much tougher he's also doing his own dubbing. “Though I grew up in Hyderabad I can barely say anything beyond 15-20 words. And here there are quite a few dialogues for me.”

He says he's delighted to see young actors create a niche for themselves on the strength of sheer talent. “I am really proud of Rajkumar Rao's work. Especially in Newton and CityLights which is his best work according to me. Vicky was outstanding in Masaan and so was Jim Sarbh in Neerja. I really like to watch these guys' work,” but admits to being a big Ranbir Kapoor fan. “He's such a physical actor. He's the only actor who uses his whole body so uninhibitedly to give
to the character. The way he uses his eyes, hands face is just brilliant. Look at the way he sings on screen. Just amazing.”

Varma dreams of acting with Vishal Bharadwaj and Vikramaditya Motwane. “Their work really hurts me in the gut and affects me in so many ways. Udaan is such a difficult movie I have to still recover from. Lootere was such a challenging film. Hyder, Omkara I want to watch again and Maqbool is my go-to textbook cult film.”