ONLY I HAVE DONE FULL NUDITY IN INDIA'

piyushroy Posted online: Monday , May 26, 2008 at 1042 hrs

An idealist, a RAW agent, a municipal sweeper, a schoolteacher and a horny villager, 20-film old 'superstar of Indian art house cinema'—that's what Time magazine called him—Rahul Bose is raring to direct his second film after seven years
A review of Santosh Sivan's Before The Rains in NYT calls your character TK the movie's 'most compelling figure.
The film has also got seven unfavourable and seven good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Once a film releases, anybody is free to criticise it, irrespective of its creator's misplaced notion that he or she knows best. So an actor cannot have thin skin; he should have thick skin that's porous. How different is Before The Rains from other Indian-American love stories?
It is well past failed attempts to ape Bend It Like Beckham. It epitomizes collaboration –music by an LA-based composer, script based on an Israeli short story, direction by a Malayali, production by four Americans, acting by one British, one American and two Indians – and yet it is an organic and beautifully told tale. The team didn't start off saying, 'I want to make an Indo-American or Indo-Brit film.' It was rather, 'Let's make a great story.' Any directors you wish to work with?
Shekhar Kapur, because I have heard so much about him being an actor's director. Mira Nair, because actors speak highly of her. Mani Ratnam, with whom I I went for hikes into the Canyons at the Palm Springs Festival. He is quiet, gently funny and would be nice to work. Time magazine has called you 'the superstar of Indian art house cinema.' Comment.
It's extremely flattering, but hugely amusing. It's a kind of a statement that will be in your biography. A distributor, post the screening of English August at the Toronto film festival, had said that I can carry a film. It was one of the most important comments I ever got. People said the same after Shaurya. If, as a superstar of art house cinema, I can actually bring in the audience for a budget movie, I take it as a compliment. How come you've forayed into commercial cinema even as you earlier insisted on doing only art films?
From English August to Tahaan, of the 20-odd films that I have done, 12-13 would be art house. While doing art house, I felt I needed more opportunities as an actor. So, I did Takshak. Then followed the buddy flick in Jhankar Beats, a romantic comedy in Pyaar Ke Side Effects and now I am playing a RAW agent opposite Mallika Sherawat in a farcical comedy Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam. Next, I want to do action. Have I alighted the high horse of doing only art cinema and become a hypocrite? Yes. But fact is that an art house actor would not get to kill nine people or sing Tu ashiqui hai. If you want to exercise your acting muscles, you got to sing Tu ashiqui hai and go into different genres. That's what I am doing though I still wouldn't attempt the Hum Aapke Hain Kaun kind of films as I would be disastrous in them. What homework did you do to play a Bombay Municipal Corporation sweeper and sing a song in Mumbai Chakachak?
I hanged out with and understood the daily routine of the 14 BMC boys who act in the film. I play a village boy employed by the BMC. So when there is a celebration with taturi and drums, he naturally starts dancing. The film has a robust folk element, so I decided to sing and dance. As the poster-boy of Indian cinema in English, what's your take on its future?
Indian cinema in English is dying, if not almost dead. Five years ago, people realised that the cost of making an Everybody Says I'm Fine is equivalent to that of Jhankar Beats, and the latter's audience is 40 times the former. So why spend Rs 2.5 crore on an English film and not Rs 4 crore on a Jhankar Beats? You can only justify an expense of Rs 1 or 1.5 crore on an English film unless you dub it in Hindi. Finally, the stories that are being told in English in India are not those that necessarily need to be told in English. What led you to adapt Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke for your second directorial venture?
Though its theme — love, betrayal and drugs — sounds clichd, Moth Smoke is a wonderful book. It's very dark. In cinema, the opposite of darkness is not light. It's sweetness. It is to throttle your loved one while you are kissing her. It is to sip fine wine while you make delicate cuts across the veins on your wrist. Or listen to great music as you jump off a cliff. So it's going to be sweet, poetic and dark. Since it's set in upscale Pakistan of 1998, it will be in English, with bits of Urdu. I have told my casting director in New York to find three new South Asian faces for the film. The shooting will start by December. Dropping pants seems to be a given with you. What's your take on male nudity in Indian films today?
Being bare-bodied isn't a big deal anymore. But full nudity still is. Nobody has done it in India except me in English August, which had a flash of frontal too. I find the idea of looking good and puffed amusing.
My body isn't sculpted for the effect though. It is a requisite for rugby that I have been playing for the last 25 years. What does featuring in every new list of eligible bachelors do to your ego?
I am totally unsurprised; I just seem to be outlasting the others. What can I do if I am a bachelor? I don't believe in the institution of marriage, that's all. It seems to be the busiest year for you – four films released, four more in progress. How satisfied are you creatively?
The four points in the square for me have been Kaal Purush, Before The Rains, The Whisperers and The Japanese Wife. I will die a very happy fulfilled actor now. My character in the recently-released Kaal Purush is a failure—a junior clerk with a wife unhappy over his lack of success. The film asks a simple question—what is happiness? This man gets happiness from sunset. From the sight of two lovers kissing. He will sit next to them and say, 'It's lovely to see you guys kissing.' Of course, the lovers flee, but that's him. He's also a beautiful father. I used my father – he died eight months ago but did watch the film— as a reference. I can always look at that film and tell my niece that's the way my father was. That's my kind of cinema, so full of humanism. You were against Anuranan being dubbed in Hindi. What about Kaal Purush?
Anuranan's pitch and tune was very Bengali. It's for a niche audience of 40-60-year-old women in Bengal and thus ran for 100 days there. It's embarrassing in Hindi and was slaughtered by critics. Not every film can cross cultures. Some films are universal in their content and style though. If Kaal Purush is dubbed in Hindi, it would work. It is minimalist and un-Bengali.

Which are your all-time favourite characters?
Apu through all the three Ray films, Keyser Sze in The Usual Suspects, Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, Chaplin in The Kid, Peter Sellers in The Party, Robin Williams in The Fisher King, Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot (My god, what an actor!), Sean Penn in Sweet and Lowdown, Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant's Woman and Jennifer Kendall in 36 Chowringhee Lane.

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