Class act

It is 36 degrees Celsius but Roshan Taneja's military jacket and tartan muffler suggest otherwise. His attire has little to do with the air-conditioning in his cabin in bungalow no. 29, Mhada – the lane off Versova Telephone Exchange enshrining all things Bollywood, from recording studios to dude-bro gyms.

But such observations (like the one about Taneja's resemblance to Jay Sherman in The Critic) count for zilch over the next hour-and-a-half. The focus is on wresting anecdotes from India's first professional acting instructor who has coached everyone from Jaya Bachchan and Naseeruddin Shah to Rani Mukerji and Ranbir Kapoor. His alumni roster challenges print constraints; suffice to say that if acting in India is a religion, the Roshan Taneja School of Acting is the pulpit.

"Such schools are everywhere because of me. But most are like dukaans, focusing only on moneymaking," tut-tuts the 83-year-old. Ask him about star progeny and the other-moneyed flocking to The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute as a rite of passage, and he points to one of the many framed photographs alongside his desk.

It's a picture of legendary acting coach Sanford Meisner.

"He's the real teacher. No one compares to him."

Roots

Hailing from Kulachi in the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Taneja grew up in Lucknow, Bareilly and Delhi, where his first brush with acting was courtesy the fabled Little Theatre Group. The National School of Drama (NSD) didn't exist then, so he applied to institutes in the US for a scholarship. Of the seven he wrote to, one gave him the nod: The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where Sanford Meisner was director of the acting department.

"I always wanted to act but my height was a problem. Which was why I went to America: to get qualifications and make up for my deficits," he smiles knowingly.

The sequel to his four years under Meisner was a five-year struggle knocking on filmmakers' doors in Bombay. Until one day, someone suggested he meet "scholarly director" Mahesh Kaul (uncle of Mani Kaul, a trailblazer in India's parallel cinema movement). Kaul put him on a monthly retainer of Rs. 100, giving him cameos in the likes of the 1962 Guru Dutt starrer Sautela Bhai.

Wasn't it disillusioning to make do with blink-and-miss roles?

"See, I wasn't hero material, and no one had the roles I wanted," Taneja stresses. "If I'd stayed in the US, I'd have found my niche. Nothing could have dragged me away from there. Except destiny."

The FTII years

That embattled Gajendra Chauhan, chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), was Taneja's student may count as a point of interest, but Dronacharya himself is in no mood to get entangled in such matters.

Instead, he harks to 1962, when FTII's first principal Jagat Murari approached Mahesh Kaul for recommendations on the acting department. Taneja was appointed ad hoc as assistant due to Kaul's endorsement, but it wasn't until 1966 that he headed the department.

For the first time in the '60s, India had home-grown acting students. But the watershed years weren't without hiccups. "People mocked and jeered, saying 'Ashok Kumar aur Dilip Kumar ne acting thodi seekhi hai.'" Taneja remembers. "But our selection process was elaborate. After auditions in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, we had screen tests. An industry person would be invited to FTII to help us finalise the batch of 20."

What started as a pool of 1,000 applicants swelled to 10,000-plus by the '70s. Much of this – especially in the case of women – was because Jaya Bachchan (nee Bhaduri), had just delivered a hit in Guddi (1971).

"Of course," says Taneja when asked if he remembers her FTII audition. "She came with a doll – a "dead child" – in her arms and enacted the role of a bereaved mother. Jaya had great emotional range."

Meanwhile, Naseeruddin Shah was made to un-learn everything he'd imbibed at NSD.

Why?

"Because," says the octogenarian, drumming his knuckles on his desk for emphasis, "NSD focuses on theory. I stress on practice. There's no theatre acting, TV acting or film acting in my school. A good actor adapts to every medium."

Under Taneja's aegis, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, Danny Denzongpa, Shatrughan Sinha, Asrani, Rehana Sultana and others blossomed at FTII. As also Mithun Chakraborty, for whom the instructor has affinity aplenty. His audition in Bombay was good, Taneja recounts, save for one problem:

"When asked why he hadn't auditioned in Calcutta, Mithun said, 'Because I'm a Naxal.' I told him to return the following year because arre, how could we have a Naxalite in FTII?" Taneja chortles. "Then he pleaded, insisting he'd said that for the heck of it. Bahut pheku hai woh."

Getting schooled

During the tete-a-tete, there's a knock on the door followed by an apology for interrupting. The visitor walks over and touches Taneja's feet before beating a retreat. The reverence is reminiscent of last year's National Students Film Awards at FTII, where Taneja was felicitated along with ace cinematographer KPR Nair for betrothing many alumni to film, theatre and TV.

He may have left FTII in 1976 and launched Actor's Studio – now the Roshan Taneja School of Acting. But one thing remains unchanged: his insistence on creating curricula and daily time tables. Taneja still teaches five days a week from 9:30-11am.

There's also word that he remains a drill sergeant.

"I don't play Hitler, but this discipline is for their own good. Look at Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan," Taneja underlines. "Khanna was finished because he'd laze away, not going for shoots on time. Amitabh was both talented and punctual, turning up on sets even before directors. That's why he's come this far."

As is the rallying cry of generations past, Taneja reckons that students today have it easy. Many forget monologues even after three classes, he frowns, and his one-year course dwindled to a four-month one to stay afloat, so that people wouldn't flock to schools offering two and three-month courses.

Taneja's first Actor's Studio batch – one of his favourites – comprised the likes of Anil Kapoor and Gulshan Grover and was taught by Om Puri, who earned Rs. 800 a month back then as instructor. "Anil (Kapoor) was most diligent. He'd change three buses from Chembur to Juhu and still be there at 9:30am sharp. Not once did I find him wanting," he remembers.

His insistence on students following the given path was evident from the outset, when, in the late '60s, auteur Mrinal Sen approached FTII to cast Jaya Bhaduri in Bhuvan Shome. Few years earlier, Tarachand Barjatya – founder of Rajshri Productions – had expressed interest in casting Asrani for his 1964 blockbuster, Dosti.

Taneja hadn't entertained either of them.

"It was our policy to not uproot students from their course," he says in defense. "Jaya was in tears. I told her 'Go if you want to, but you will not come back for the second year.' You know the choice she made."

The syllabus for the acting diploma – which runs into lakhs – at the Roshan Taneja School of Acting covers method techniques, dance, martial arts, script analysis, "memory and expression exercises", yoga and diction training. One of the first things students are told is that there's no guarantee despite a word or two with casting agents, producers and secretaries. "There are good actors who don't get through, and lucky ones who do despite not having talent. It happens," he shrugs.

From sitting through auditions where some threatened suicide if not chosen and directing Shatrughan Sinha in an FTII short, Are We Doing All This? (in which Sinha's one-liner, "Kuch thanda lao", became the rage on campus), to overseeing consignments of acting hopefuls, Roshan Taneja has witnessed the ebbs and tides of mainstream and parallel cinema for 53 years running. He may not be chuffed about the dilution of method acting ("Just reading about it doesn't make you a method actor, and neither does changing your body. It's not a dress you wear.") or the mushrooming of copycat institutes, but the diminutive man whose legacy is anything but has reason to persist:

"I may be disillusioned. But this…" he points to Sanford Meisner's photograph "…this is the only thing I know."