Game!

That’s not just the name of an underwhelming Abhishek Bachchan movie. It’s also how you’d describe a troublingly agenda-free Abhishek Bachchan interview.

I am seated on a sofa inside one of the rooms in a five-star hotel. (Perhaps it’s a six-star. I can never say with these things.) I am seated on this sofa because I’ve been instructed to sit here, not in the chair opposite me. That chair is where Abhishek Bachchan will sit, a sort of high-backed wooden throne. (Think of a twilit BBC production of King Lear, without a glint of gold.) I wonder briefly what kind of psychological advantage this will bestow on the star, this particular seating on this particular chair, but I brush the thought away because I have bigger things on my mind. For instance, what I am going to talk to him about. He is not here to promote a film or discuss a project with a filmmaker or launch a brand of something whose advertisements will flood our television screens. He is in the city to participate in one of those events which to actors today has become as unremarkable as breathing, and his presence in the city is apparently reason enough for an interview.

Gathering my woolly thoughts, I glance at the closed door that separates us, him and me, interviewee and interviewer. Marginally raised voices. Perhaps he’s on the phone. Not for long though. The door opens and he enters, a shiny pink shirt erupting through a grey suit like flesh from a gash. He sits on the throne and crosses one very long leg over the other. A hand rises to the face and comes to rest below narrowed eyes, the forefinger an arrow pointed at an indeterminate space between us. I feel I have to prepare him for the worst. This is going to be a very general interview, I say weakly, defensively. An amateur player staring across the net at Federer. No problem, he says calmly. The voice is just like it is in the movies, a bass booming through a pipe of metal. My turn to serve. I ask if the omnipresence required of an actor today is a problem. This is a rare weekday he’s not shooting. He could be napping this afternoon. Instead, owing to the ceaseless cranking of public-relations machinery, he has to talk to me.

His response is an ace. He doesn’t nap in the afternoon, he says. Secondly, he likes to work round the clock. He worked all of last night, got into a flight in the morning, came here, loaded up on some coffee and went where he was supposed to go. He says he doesn’t mind that at all. He believes that this is part and parcel of what he does. His attitude is that he’s going to enjoy it while it lasts. Because he knows it’s not going to last forever. Love-fifteen. I ask if this being everywhere – on television, on billboards, on movie screens, in newspapers, in hotel rooms with self-doubting journalists – doesn’t dilute stardom. He allows that it does take away the mystique, a bit of that aura. But he says that’s also a requirement of the audience today, who do not want to revere stars like they used to but befriend them instead. He sums up their attitude as “You’re my friend, so talk to me, don’t talk down to me.”

Hence his presence on social media sites. Twitter, he says, is all about making a more tight-knit community with the person you admire, and if you’re going to be available on a social media platform you have to be available for the brickbats as well as the bouquets. I am distracted, momentarily, by the fluted way he says it – not boh-kays but boo-kays. But eyes on the net. He continues to rally. He disagrees that stardom is a tall ivory tower from where he counts clouds. He says that his feet are planted solidly on earth, propelling him to a movie theatre, for instance, to watch a movie with commoners. The mind fills with the image of kings from legends who used to don disguises and prowl their empires. Except that there’s no disguise here. He says he’s not the kind of actor who’s going to run away from his audience. What are they going to do? They’re going to come ask him for an autograph and a photograph and he happily obliges, because at the end of the day they’re the people who put him where he is.

He sounds genuine. I wonder, however, if this acknowledgement of fans is also the result of leafing through What to Tell Interviewers, a copy of which is thrust into the hands of every actor on the sets of their first film, and whose pages spill over with such quote-ready nuggets as “we are just friends” and “I am still a student of cinema” and “my best role is yet to come.” I lob over a question about a role he wants to play more than anything else. He says he’s never identified such a role. He’s very impatient. He does something and moves on to the next thing, and the film that he’s working on is the film that consumes him the maximum. He says he hasn’t yet been slotted and it excites him to do diverse roles, and then he admits that slotting is inevitable. He points to Schwarzenegger, who we want to see in action movies, not drama. No actor likes this slotting, he says, but the industry, today, allows more elbow room, more creative freedom. As an example, he looks back at the period he did Dhoom and Guru and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.

Does he think Tamil heroes, like his friend Dhanush, get away with playing more rooted parts than their Bollywood counterparts? He hovers between agreement and disagreement. Charge to the net or wait at the baseline? He says that Telugu and Tamil heroes choose to play rooted roles because they’re catering to their audience, and if Hindi-film heroes are playing more cosmopolitan characters, then it’s because of their audience. But the opening up of overseas markets may mean that Tamil heroes could choose to become cosmopolitan too. He says that the last ten years have focused attention on regional industries like Telugu and Tamil cinema, which are now being seen by people who don’t speak Telugu and Tamil. He says Kamal Uncle and Rajini Uncle are huge examples of that, and that the overseas markets are opening up, and it can’t be just the expatriate audiences from these states that are watching these movies.

No, he doesn’t recall his first visit to Chennai. He was too young. But yes, he remembers, from later visits, the Taj Coromandel, because everybody used to stay there. Yes, he watches Tamil cinema, sometimes with subtitles, sometimes with a translator with him. My shots are unfocused. I’ve abandoned all pretence of staying in the game. Looking forward to slumping in the locker room. I glance at my hastily scribbled notes. The words stare back unfeelingly, no help at all. I seek recourse in the pages of What to Ask Interviewees, that sterling repository of such battle-weary clichés as “what is it like working with Mani Ratnam” and “will you ever do a Tamil film” and “tell us what it’s like being a daddy.” In a desperate moment, I choose “have you ever thought of directing a movie?” and regret it instantly. I watch in half-frozen horror as the question leaves my lips and heads towards him, wondering if I can summon up an alternate self from a parallel dimension to lunge at the words and swat them away, mid-air, before they enter his ears.

Too late. SuperJourno doesn’t swoop in and save the day. He graciously pretends not to notice that the ball has crashed into the stands. He says he’s not qualified, but one can never say never, and he’s too busy learning the craft of acting, and if he were to direct he’d take time off and do it properly. He is very happy being an actor. I decide it’s best that I walk over to the net, shake hands and surrender. This conversation deserves the dignity of a non-lingering death. I tell him I’m running out of things to ask. He laughs for the first time. A flash of white in that thicket of stubble, which he says grew out of the fact that he doesn’t like to shave. I venture that this is tougher, requiring more diligent care. He says trimming once in three days is better than shaving every morning. At the moment of death, the game has sprung to life. We have finally found common ground, he and I, over a residual ritual of masculinity. Picking up my kit, I ask what the stubble has given him. He replies with the afternoon’s best quote: a great mask to hide behind.

An edited version of this piece can be found here.

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Posted in: Cinema: Hindi, Cinema: Interview