Made in India by Milind Soman

Author:Milind Soman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353057459
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2020-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

4

SCREEN TIME

‘The director sent for me for Tarzan. I climbed the tree and walked out on a limb. The next day, I was told I was an actor.’

—Johnny Weissmuller, five-time Olympic gold-medallist swimmer and actor known for his iconic role as Tarzan, in Tarzan the Ape Man

While ‘Made in India’ was the ‘acting’ assignment that was responsible for making me ‘go viral’, it was by no means my first one. The same year—yup, we’re still in 1995—a landmark TV series was launched on the state-owned television channel, Doordarshan. It was India’s first English series—have we had any since?—from a time when television was brave, experimental and fresh, when it did not concern itself solely with mythological sagas, or worse, conniving mothers- and daughters-in-law. The series had a catchy and memorable title track, and it was called, rather poetically, A Mouthful of Sky. I played one of the lead characters.

But Mouthful wasn’t my first casting call. In 1990, a full five years before this series hit the screens, a young moviemaker who had directed the blockbuster film I mentioned earlier—Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak—had come calling. He had a role for me, he said, in his upcoming film, tentatively titled Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. He had seen me on the cover of GFQ (Gentleman’s Fashion Quarterly), liked my ‘intensity’ and thought I would be perfect for the negative male lead, Shekhar Malhotra.

I was stunned. This was Mansoor Khan, who had already delivered, on his debut, what would become one of the most talked-about films in Bollywood history!

It would have been foolish to reject Mansoor’s offer, so I didn’t. But the excitement I felt about the project was not so much about the possibility of becoming an actor as it was about trying something new, something different, that had fallen into my lap as serendipitously as things always seemed to do. I mean, I didn’t even speak Hindi at any level of fluency then! As for my acting experience, although I had done a bit of elocution and drama at school, and even been good at it, I had always naturally been happier with my books than under the arc lights.

My excitement, however, was tinged with misgivings, especially in one respect. You see, in those days, all of us models thought ourselves quite superior to Hindi film actors and actresses. We were the beautiful people, all sophisticated and English-speaking, who dressed according to global fashion trends, knew not only posture and walk but also fine food and wine, and understood how to wear clothes and style them (it was amazing how quickly the Marathi boy from Shivaji Park, who had known absolutely nothing about drape and design just a couple of years before, had morphed into this). To our condescending eyes, Hindi actors seemed loud and crass and bling-ed out—their sense of humour (at least on-screen) never rising beyond slapstick, their dancing moves bawdy when they weren’t plain ridiculous. And as for their acting—well, the less said about that hammy, melodramatic and exaggerated thing that went by that name, the better.

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