He’s been the face of many MTV shows since 2004. He’s been an RJ and VJ. He’s played host on cricket chats and talent hunts. He’s sung and co-composed for films. He’s an actor who made the most unimaginable Bollywood debut — that of a sperm donor — and which surprisingly went down well with the finicky Indian audience. The barely 30 Ayushmann Khurrana has now picked another unusual film — Hawaizaada — a period biopic that tells the story of scientist Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, credited with having constructed India’s first unmanned plane, eight years before the Wright Brothers did. The movie is set in the Mumbai of 1895.
The timing of the film couldn’t be better, says Ayushmann Khurrana, in Bengaluru to promote the film that releases on January 30. What came first? The film? Or the controversy at the Indian Science Congress where a paper on ‘Ancient Indian Aviation Technology’ was presented is still buzzing? “The film’s release depends on this. The film is going with the time. At the Indian Science Congress, it was debated. Prime Minister Modi and Baba Ramdev are talking about it. And it all happened in the first week of January. I’m sure they saw the promos of Hawaizaada . I didn’t know of Talpade till I got a one-line summary of the script. It was then that I Googled and read up on him!” says Ayushmann. He’s all red-eyed from sleepless nights of travel and promotion, but smiles and chats away gleefully. After a not-so-great stint with films like Nautanki Saala and Bewakoofiyan , he’s now back with a film that’s managed to gather quite a bit of momentum before takeoff.
“We should be proud of this person. Of course, there’s no proof he made the flight; he didn’t patent his design. But in 1895 he is said to have completed an 18 to 20 minute flights in front of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. But it never became big news perhaps because the press was governed by the British. And also probably because there was no social media!” says a bemused Ayushman. Excerpts from a quick chat:
The desire to fly… It’s everybody’s aspiration. It’s a very middle-class aspiration to board a plane. As a kid I had it too. And it was embarrassingly late, my first ever flight in my life — I was 16. And my first flight was to Bangalore to write the Karnataka CET. Of course, I didn’t get through, obviously ( laughs loudly ).
Despite the milieu of 1895, Talpade attempted a bizarre thing. The early 20 century was a time of revolution. Before that it was the time of British hegemony, when discoveries were happening in the West. Talpade is an icon and legend. We face obstacles in our life and we can take a lesson from him on how to overcome them.
Making a debut with a film like Vicky Donor I was a sperm donor much before Vicky Donor ; I had donated sperm during my stint with MTV Roadies. So doing a film like Vicky Donor as a debut feature film was not at all a whacky idea for me. When I first heard of the script I thought it may be a cheap one and may go towards black humour. But it was a touching portrayal of the issue, with the irony that a sperm donor can’t have his own baby. The commercial success of the film was a surprise! In 2015 I am doing Dum Laga Ke Haisha , a Yash Raj Films production. And Shoojit Sircar’s Aagra Ka Dabra , a film about an actor.
Going back to TV after doing films The lines between the two media have blurred; the two are symbiotic. But TV has a greater reach. That TV stars can’t get breaks in films was a notion that was there in the past. But after Shah Rukh Khan and Vidya Balan did it, I did. And now there will be more.
Tuned in musically I’ve composed a solo for this film — Dil-e-nadaan. I did a single in 2014 Mitti Di Khushboo . I will be doing singles soon. I have a band called Ayushman After School; we named it that because we classmates used to jam after school. On February 14, we are doing our first show in Ahmedabad for Valentine’s Day.
