Some childhood memories never die. One of them is Rajit Kapur playing Byomkesh Bakshi in Basu Chatterjee’s interpretation of Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s popular fictional stories of the Bengali detective who loves to call himself the seeker of truth. The truth is, many adaptations later, Kapur remains the best Bakshi. And who can forget his experiments with truth as the young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in The Making of Mahatma .
In both cases he rose above factors like ethnic identity and face value to make parts his own. “I am very fortunate that these two roles still hold people’s interest,” says Kapur. “I had already played Michael Madhusudan Dutt in Yugantar when director Shubhankar Ghosh suggested my name to Basu Chatterjee. He made my job so easy that I just had to learn how to tie dhoti,” he chuckles in a telephonic conversation. “He had done all the scripting, translation and dialogues in advance. He gave me the script of 20 episodes with dialogues in one go and said that I will get the next 13 very soon. In television, we have moved ahead with technology but still we can’t think beyond two episodes.” It is this lack of homework that keeps Kapur away from television. “You need to chew your food. If you swallow it, you won’t get the taste.”
As for Gandhi, Kapur says his mentor Shyam Benegal was convinced that he didn’t want to match his facial expressions with the young Gandhi. “He wanted me to understand his mind and his actions, and said if I get them right people would forget about the lack of facial similarities,” says Kapur as he speaks from the sets of Reloaded, the prequel of Bang Bang .
At a time when there were water tight compartments between art and commercial films, Kapur was our lovable everyman riding on films like Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda . When the walls were being broken he sneaked into the mainstream space and added weight to films like Ghulam . After a lull, Kapur is back and says his hands are full. It is another matter that he is still not being challenged enough. The last instance was The Threshold , where he and Neena Gupta played the middle-aged couple, who revisit their relationship after their son’s marriage. “A two-character film, it is very sensitive and beautifully made. I just hope many people get to see it. It brings out how a man can be insecure and why a wife has to spell out everything to be understood.” Kapur says that the young director (Pushan Kriplani) and writer have worked very hard but unfortunately they are not connected with industry honchos and entertainment wizards.
The marketing handicaps apart, Kapur feels, acting has become more natural and better stories are coming out in the last five years. “Whatever be the budget of the film, if the story is not compelling and there is no emotional content to hold the viewer, it won’t work irrespective of who is in it and where it is filmed.”
It is important, he adds, that filmmakers have realised the importance of giving the script to actors in advance. “Earlier a lot of scripting and dialogue writing was done on the sets. Now we are little more focussed. There is emphasis on pre-production work and many more filmmakers are being able to tell stories close to their heart.”
And the lack of challenge in films pulls Kapur to theatre which he says, “flows in his bloodstream”. An example of it was seen at the India Habitat Centre where he attempted Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit this past Sunday as part of Old World Theatre Festival. A unique theatrical experiment, here the actor gets the script only on stage. The play requires no set, no director and a different actor performs it every time. Some big names like John Hurt, Sinead Cusack and Ken Loach have attempted it. In India, Arundhati Nag has tried it.
“The challenge is you can’t do any preparation. You don’t know what are you expected to do. You are in an unknown territory. You have to make do with whatever presence of mind and experience you have.” There are some basic instructions that are given to the actor 48 hours before the performance. They are like wearing comfortable clothing, not reading about it and asking any other actors. They don’t guide you into what needs to be done on stage. It only says that you should be loud and clear so that the audience can hear you clearly,” Kapur grins.
The actor doesn’t want to go into the politics of the play but he is playing a lot of political characters. He confirms that he is playing Jawaharlal Nehru in Solar Eclipse , a Hollywood film that promises to present an alternative view of the events leading to Partition. “It is a small role. It was not like I had to play Nehru for a month. But yes, I get to deliver his famous midnight speech.” Then he is playing a Muslim League leader in Begum Jaan . It brings us to the brouhaha around Pakistani artists working in India.
“My point is we could have asked the artistes to go back if the two countries were at war and diplomatic ties had been snapped. When the diplomatic ties are in place, why are we declaring war on the actor community first,” he wonders. He agrees with the Prime Minister’s view that there is difference between the government and the people of Pakistan. “Artistes are ordinary people.” One asks, if it could be a step-by-step process. “Then why are you starting with artistes. Just because they are easy targets as they are always in public eye,” questions Kapur as he rushes for his next shot.
