~*Sushant's Bollywood Journey#19*~ - Page 59

Exclusive Images Of Sushant Singh Rajput Works Out At SportsFit Vasant Kunj

His game too has completely transformed over the last year. "I've been playing cricket all my life, but now I can see the ball moving well and hit it for six. I'm doing the same thing I've been doing for 26 years but I'm doing it differently. I feel like a cricketer today," he beams.

Quiz him on Captain Cool, and he asserts that Dhoni's biggest ace is that while living in the present, he can totally detach himself from the past and the future. "He is always here and now, and has immense clarity about what he believes to be fundamentally right and wrong. But once he takes a decision, he doesn't think again, no matter what the consequences," asserts Sushant.

It's a quality he himself shares with MSD which is one of the primary reasons the script resonated with him. Sushant dropped out of engineering college and admits that it was one of the stupidest mistakes of his life."If I had waited another six months, I could have come to Mumbai with a degree. I take time taking a decision but once it's made, there are no regrets, no insecurity," he says.

So, while other actors are impatient to prove a point with three-four releases a year and make lots of money, he is happy to spend six-seven months on the slow acquisition of skills while prepping for a Dhoni or a Paani. "For me the process of making a film is important. Money is important too since I grew up in a large fam ily with dad as the only earning member. While my sisters and I were academically sound, financially we weren't too good. I could not live my dream of going to Stanford University," he sighs.

However, he did live out other dreams; of a house--he'll be moving into a penthouse by the year-end--the car of his choice and a sizeable bank bal ance. "And once I stopped wor rying about money, it lost its lus tre," he smiles. But being worldly wise Sushant doesn't intend to go back to the struggling days, so he has joined hands with seniors from his alma mater, the Delhi College of Engineering, some of whom have gone to the Indian Institute of Management, on a series of innovative startups which will bring in loads of money. And this will leave him to do this job for the love of acting, for the passion and the excitement that brought him to Mumbai. "I want to be proud of every film I do, pick and choose my roles with care. These start-ups will give me the extra confidence to do so. If you are in the rat race, you will always be a rat," he laughs.

The first of the many start-ups however, he admits, will not make money immediately. But it's a project close to his heart because his mother believed in it and it is connected to education. Sushant won't go into details but says that it will offer scholarships to bright students from all over India."A kind of a super 30. May be we can fund their higher education to the best universities in UK," he says.

Also, he believes it's time to introduce some changes in our curriculum and the education system where the emphasis still is on retentive skills. "But now with search engines like Google, we don't need to store information, it's already there. We have to change the way we teach and learn so that after graduation it works for us," reasons Sushant who plans to tie up with those educational institutions abroad that are practising this. "We know what we want to do, it's how to go about it that is taking time. We should get it rolling by next year."

Meanwhile, the shuddh desi romance with Ankita Lokhande is set to turn into a shuddh desi marriage. Unlike other actors, Sushant has never shied away from personal questions. He's been open about the fact that he has been dating Ankita for the last six-seven years, living in with her. "I was told that if I get married, I will lose my female fan following. If that happens, I will quit acting," he asserts. "Ankita wants an elaborate wedding and it will happen at the end of next year when I am done with my current commitments. By then I'll have a year to condition myself so that I can enjoy the wedding. I have no option," he chuckles.

And what's happening to Dinesh Vijan's love story? "That's the next film after the Dhoni biopic," he quips. But Alia Bhatt's walked out of it, so who's the new heroine?
"That's never been my concern," he shrugs nonchalantly.

In January, following his exit from Test cricket, Dhoni and John took off on a threeday outing. The two did a fun photo-shoot when they came together to launch a salon in Bandra, laughingly styling each other's hair. Speaking about the cricketer, the actor had said, "Mahi is strong and resilient. When a film of mine gets a poor opening, he smiles and tells me that I've had a bad year but the next one will be better. He knows how to receive the brickbats with the bouquets. He's one of the most balanced guys I know."

In the past, the two promoted the English Premier League too. And John, who has his own team in the upcoming Indian Premier League-style football league, has found a partner in Dhoni too. "They're both crazy about bikes and football and may come together to buy a football franchise in the future," a source close to the actor told Mirror.

John, who also shares a great rapport with Dhoni's wife Sakshi, will take time off to shoot for the biopic, which will chronicle their friendship and some of the fun moments. Now, here's a bromance to watch out for.