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Taj... As big as it gets
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As Taj Mahal gets ready for release, SURESH KOHLI speaks to Kabir Bedi essaying the role of Shahjahan.
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Kabir Bedi with Manisha Koirala in Taj Mahal.
ONE HAD been chasing him for a while now for reasons other than simply a journalistic assignment. The last occasion he came home, he borrowed some of one's cherished books. The usual promise of returning them after reading not materialising. When one spoke to him in Mumbai he said he was going to Udaipur for a shoot of Akbar Khan's magnum opus Taj Mahal. I decided to reachthe Lake City. Will Kabir Bedi redeem the promise of returning those books? He, indeed, had forgotten to bring the books back. So one decided on the next best course of action. Speak to him to recover part of the cost.
"This is my third innings in Bollywood, and I have to be grateful to Akbar for making it a memorable one. I absolutely leapt at the opportunity when he offered me the role of the older Shahjahan. For two reasons: it is a story that needs to be told, and it is a role that needs to be performed. It was the kind of role I have been dreaming of playing one day in India. I actually went back to the Taj Mahal two months before we started shooting just to see it, and get a sense of the man from what he had created. I had to try and enter the mind and spirit of the man. "I do love period films. There is a lot of drama in history, and there are some great stories waiting to be told, and many great stories have been told. Being a student of history I knew a fair amount about Shahjahan anyway. But I must admit not the way he is being portrayed in Taj Mahal. What is interesting is the way Akbar has structured the film. It begins with Shahjahan in his final crisis, when he is imprisoned by his son, and the whole love story is a series of flashbacks. It is actually the first time that the great love story of Shahjahan and Mumtaz Mahal is being told. Taj Mahal only forms the backdrop.
"Beyond my own work on the role, Akbar has been such an enormous support and inspiration. A thousand salaams to him for giving me the role but also giving me the freedom to interpret it in ways that suited me. Akbar is very clear about the result that he wants but he is flexible about how he gets there. There was some friction when we started. There were differences of style and differences of how one felt certain scenes should be shot because Akbar was returning to the big screen after a long stint with television. But whatever small teething troubles we had were ironed out quickly.
"I have survived all these years in many different industries simultaneously. One of the perils of leaving one industry and going to another is the fear of falling between two schools. Going to Europe was fine. The success of Sandokan gave me a certain star value but from Europe to Los Angeles proved to be an unnerving experience. My regret is I spent too much time there, some of my bleakest years. But even in these bleakest years Europe was always there for me, somehow. There was always some mini series, some film, something or the other that enabled me pursue my
profession with dignity. Acting is what I do to make my living. I have no other businesses. So now I advise all aspiring actors to always have another source of income.
"But somehow, wherever I be, somehow whether by accident or design, destiny or whatever belief system is, I would come back to Bollywood from time to time to do a bunch of films, and then go back. There was always some work for me. This time too the same happened. There was a bunch of films waiting for me when I came back this time, of which Taj Mahal has to be the biggest and most important project. It was my dream to do a period film, a historical film. And Taj Mahal has come to me at a time when an aging actor with depleting resources hardly has any options. This film gives me the opportunity of showing Bollywood and also those who have believed in me over the years that given the right role there can be a lot more than what they have imagined me to be."
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