It is a truth universally acknowledged that a little or lesser known actor, making a strong impact in a small or “supporting” role, will have a grounding in theatre in general and National School of Drama (NSD) in particular. So too for Rohit Chaudhary and Sapna Sand, now better known as Ayushmann Khurana’s friend Munna and Rajkummar Rao’s mother, respectively, in last week’s release Bareilly Ki Barfi ( BKB ).
The two actors don’t just have NSD in common but are also proud about having cleared its tough “entrance test” in the first attempt itself. “A batch of 20 was chosen from over 2,000 entrants,” remembers Sand, a 1993 graduate of NSD. The “simple pahadi girl” from Mandi could well be one of the earliest women from Himachal Pradesh to have graduated from the renowned drama school, perhaps the second or the third. NSD was a natural way ahead for her since she was into theatre and music and had already made a name for herself on the HP stage.
For Chaudhary, who passed out in 2011, NSD was, in fact, the reason for completing his studies. The Etawah boy, who had moved to Lucknow for further studies after his tenth standard, had dropped an year but went on to complete his graduation only because it was the minimum qualification required for getting into NSD. Chaudhary is happy that none of the Bareilly … reviews have referred to him as a sidekick, though it’s easy for the hero’s friend to get slotted as one. “I admire [actor] Deepak Dobriyal a lot but didn’t want Munna to be seen as Dobriyal’s Pappi in Tanu Weds Manu ,” he says.
True to craft
Sand who has been down with a flu, hasn’t seen BKB … and is a trifle perplexed that we want to talk to her. “But it’s such a small role,” she says, a wee bit defensively. That’s exactly the point — small can be big. “So many are talking about the role. Who is the mother? She is so good,” we tell her. She appreciates this but is matter-of-fact when it comes to films. The excitement though is palpable in her voice at the mention of theatre. She has been seen earlier in films like Nitesh Tiwari and Vikas Bahl’s Chillar Party and Bedabrata Pain’s Chittagong but it’s the list of plays which runs much longer; she has more than 50 of them behind her.
The one which comes to her mind immediately is Uttar Ramacharitam in which she played Seeta to popular actor Zakir Hussain’s Ram . In fact, after graduating, she worked for about five-six years in the NSD Repertory Company. Actors like Zakir, Vijay Raaz, Seema Biswas, Adil Hussain, Atul Kulkarni and Yashpal have been her contemporaries. Her husband — Paritosh Sand — is a well known actor himself.
Like her, Chaudhary also stayed on in Delhi after NSD and worked for a while in two of Kingdom of Dreams productions — Jhumru , where he played the lead on weekdays (with popular actor Gaurav Gera taking over on weekends) and Zangoora where he had a small villainous role. “So I have seen you in Jhumru then,” I tell him. “You won’t be able to associate Munna with him. I was clean-shaven there,” he smiles.
Across mediums
The Sands moved to Mumbai in 2001 along with their three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. “I used to take her along for all my theatre performances, make her sit in the wings and warn her to remain quiet or the audience would throw tomatoes and eggs on her mother,” Sand recollects. Lots of plays, short films and advertisements and TV and web series have been keeping her busy, besides an occasional film. She also teaches acting and has worked in Anupam Kher’s school, Actor Prepares.
Jumping mediums hasn’t ever bothered Sand. “An actor remains the same. In theatre you have to reach out to a bigger audience and there are no cuts. In films you have to learn the technicalities — the camera and the close-ups. But conceiving the character remains the same, it has to come out of the actor’s intelligence, thought and imagination.”
Luck by chance
For Chaudhary the doors to filmdom opened when he came to Mumbai, just for a day, to attend a friend’s wedding. He was dancing madly at the function when actor Pankaj Tripathi happened to see him. He suggested Chaudhary for one of the lead roles in a small film, called Life Biriyani, directed by Vivek Srivastava. Tripathi himself was playing the other important role. The film hasn’t yet found a distributor makingBKB… (technically his second film) his debut with Tripathi, who he describes as an “acting institute”, as the common co-star in both.
Like Sand, Chaudhary too has been teaching — at The Crafters — and has also directed two plays — Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Virasat and Mrityunjay Prabhakar’s Khwahishein. He remembers auditioning for BKB… and then forgetting all about it. “Actors don’t live in hope,” he says wryly. So when the call came the next day he thought it would be for the next stage of auditions. It’s when he reached the assigned place that he found himself in the middle of the entire cast, with Nitesh Tiwari, the film’s writer, doing the narration and assistant directors asking for measurements for costumes. “But no one was telling me clearly that I was on. It was the director Ashwiny [Iyer Tiwari] who finally asked me if I was free in October-November for the shoot,” he recollects .
Multi-faceted duo
The fact that he came from the region and could get the flavour of the place right with his authentic lingo and accent made him play a double role of sorts in the film. Chaudhary was also the diction coach on the sets ofBKB. He took workshops with the actors before the shoot, was on the sets, even when he was not needed as an actor, to supervise (and correct, if needed) the dialogues of others, and then was there for the dubbing as well. “I had memorised the script before the shoot, have seen the film 20-25 times over the past two and a half months,” he says. It’s the reason why he finds himself too involved with the film to have any objectivity left.
Yet BKB isn’t the be all and end all for both actors. Sand can be seen in Suparn Verma’s web series Yo Ke Hua Bro that came out around the same time as the film. And Chaudhary will be seen next in a webseries called Romanchik. Both are waiting for the right film offers. As Chaudhary puts it, it isn’t about making money but doing good work as well and he would much rather do that in theatre than opt for anything that comes his way on the big screen. What he is sure of, is directing a new play in another two months. “Your decision is your responsibility, and so is its outcome. The choice is yours,” he says. Touché!
