“I am very serious about cooking,” insists Adil Hussain for he feels one is not taking his culinary skills seriously. As somebody who finds it hard to write about food, perhaps, that is the impression one generates. But one has seen Adil cook in his kitchen and found him almost as effortless as his performance. But today the stakes are higher. He is cooking for unknown people at Nimtho, a quaint Sikkimese restaurant that takes you away from the hustle bustle of Greater Kailash. “I really care where I get my ingredients from, who I am cooking for,” Adil continues with his attempt to convince a film writer. He relates how he scans the lanes of Humayunpuri to buy authentic North Eastern ingredients, how he stops on the way from Guwahati to his hometown Goalpara to buy khar (alkaline water that imparts a unique taste to Assamese cuisine). “I am also in the business of acting so I understand false reactions,” he reminds. Well, it is a great skill for a chef to have.
It was thumbs up from friends like journalist Dibang and artist Subodh Gupta that gave Adil the confidence to step out of his kitchen to showcase his culinary talent to the world. “Subodh ate a particular Assamese fish curry that I make in khar – made by passing water through sun-dried banana peels. He said that its taste surpassed the fish curries that he had had across the globe.”
Adil has been cooking from the age of 16-17 when he left home for Guwahati for education. He pushed his mother to teach him the basics and told her to go beyond dead reckoning when it came to the measurement of ingredients. In fact, one of the dishes that he cooked at Nimtho was his mother’s recipe of cabbage and chicken which he says is very rare. “After nearly 30 years, I revisited it recently, and my wife, who is sweetly brutal in her criticism, liked it.” He connected Kashmir to Kanyakumari through his menu. If the Pandit mutton that he cooked was without garlic and onion, the stew that Adil dished out came from his stay in Kerala with a Nair family which is made of only those vegetables that grow over ground.
Rare honour
Adil understands the similarities between acting and cooking from his initial days in theatre. His skills were put to test when during the final round of selection process for admission to the National School of Drama, his batch was asked to cook for 120 people. “I took the lead. It was an exercise to test how you lead and yet not dominate. After that I cooked many times on the sets. Friends would say, aaj Aadil paka raha hai! During English Vinglish , I cooked for Sridevi. Then I cooked for Saif and Kareena when we were shooting for Agent Vinod in Latvia. When you are cooking you have to attend to the dish. Every day is different. It is like acting. You might be doing a play with a co-actor for a long time but on a given day the chemistry might not work. He dreamt of something last night and is behaving differently. You have to adjust. Here the same garlic could show tantrums if it has been sourced from a different place. So I have to sauté it accordingly. Like acting, cooking makes me more sensitive to things that are happening now,” he muses.
Last month, Adil bagged the best actor award at the Norway National Film Awards for his realistic performance in What Will People Say . “It is a big achievement because I don’t think any Indian actor has won the national film award of any other country. It also reflected the inclusive nature and vibrant nature of the arts. Here my film Sunrise ( Arunodoy ) could not compete in the National Awards because the director Partho Sen-Gupta has French citizenship. The fact that the NFDC funded the film and that Partho grew up and studied in India didn’t make a difference. Similarly, Qissa could not compete because director Anup Singh has Swiss citizenship.”
Norway’s official entry to the 91st Academy Awards, What Will People Say is about a Norwegian girl of Pakistani origin who is forced to adapt to her parents’ culture. Adil, who plays the father, says, “I was pretty familiar with the theme and the brutality of the situations. And having seen Sairat and the way khap panchayats operate in our country, the subject matter was not new for me. The challenge was to adapt to the Scandinavian way of acting, which is inspired by the Russian school – truthful yet to be seen. As someone who tries to practice such acting, the award has given me a sense of reassurance that I belong to the world stage.”
Interestingly, it was Naseeruddin Shah who introduced Adil to naturalistic acting at NSD. “I came from a small town and had social inhibitions. In his first class, he called me by name and asked me to look through a keyhole and describe a nude woman. When I started describing the back, he shouted, ‘turn her around.’ When I started describing the chin, he yelled, ‘come down to the chest.’ I realised he just wanted to free me of my inhibitions; that as actors, we have to transgress the social understanding of morality. You have to accept all things, including your lust.”
Ironically, the award hasn’t created much flutter in the Indian media. “Perhaps, it is because I don’t hire a PR agency to spread the word. I find it acidic,” laughs Adil.
Spotlight on trafficking
Meanwhile, Love Sonia , where Adil plays the father of the girl, who is central to the narrative, is making news for bringing the issue of sex trafficking into focus. However, some critics have questioned the gaze of the film. “It is not the greatest film ever made, but it does shake you. It is not a slap but a violent shake, a plea to wake up. My subjective perception is that it goes to the edge (of manipulation or objectifying the suffering) but never crosses it. I understood the seriousness of the issue when I was doing Sunrise.” The Marathi film is about a police officer whose daughter is kidnapped by traffickers and he searches her every night on the streets of Mumbai. “Till then, I didn’t know that about one lakh women are trafficked every year. I consider myself an educated man who reads newspaper. How did this figure miss me? Would I be as ignorant if one lakh doctors or politicians go missing? By turning a blind eye, we are giving impetus to a kind of slavery. When a bunch of friends returns from Bangkok and their smile suggests that they had fun, you must think of how those women ended up there.”
Though he does a Commmando here or a 2.0 there, Adil makes sure to find time for projects that matter to the artist in him. “It is a matter of taste and how you look at yourself as an actor. After success, some actors find it derogatory to be seen in public. I don’t find it odd to go to a medical shop to buy medicines. Thanks to platforms like Netflix, the viewership for truthful acting is growing. The formula is not working that much anymore.”
His choices underline his conviction. He has just finished shooting for a Khasi film in Shillong where he used to go the location riding a Scooty for the director had a very limited budget. He is dubbing for Goutam Ghose’s first Hindi film in 11 years. “It is a very interesting story – the English title is One Day in the Rains – of two poorest of poor individuals and how they still have empathy and compassion alive when they are put in a crisis.”
Talking of unstable situation, some feel NRC (National Register of Citizens) is creating one in Assam. Adil has experienced the downside himself as his niece was declared a doubtful voter. “She could stand up to the system and put her case across; not everybody has the means. Nobody can doubt the intention behind the NRC but the execution has not been smooth. I have full faith in the judicial process, let’s hope that things work out fine.”
However, he has concerns about the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016. “I find it discriminatory. Once could sense that it is part of politics as the election season is about to begin. And if political parties think that we don’t know then they don’t understand the Indian voter.”
