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The man and the actor

Rahul Bose is an actor, a writer and a rugby player

Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

GREAT COMBINATION Rahul Bose: `Rugby has taught me to have a hot heart and a cool head'

He's a champion. At his game, in his craft and of causes. A maverick actor and writer in Bollywood who's given Indian arthouse cinema a new metaphor. A rugby player and an activist who worked quietly for victims of the tsunami in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Rahul has just brought back with him much critical acclaim from the Berlin Film Festival where Budhdhadeb Dasgupta's `Kaalpurush' - Rahul's first Bengali acting venture - featured in a special panorama.

"It's a very moving film Budhdhadeb has made and I'm proud of the film and my work in it," he says.

He's almost finished shooting his second Bengali film Anuronon.

He adds: "After `White Noise,' `Chameli' and `15 Park Avenue,' there was a perception that I was happy playing the elegant prop to very powerful female actresses. So I carefully chose four films, each of a totally different genre than the other. In all of them I have a central role and I'm carrying the film," he says.

He's also doing `Pyar Ke Side Effects' with Mallika Sherawat! But clearly, what he's really taken up by is Santosh Sivan's English film `Road to the Sky,' a film set in 1937. It is a story of friendship between a Malayali boy (Bose) and a British tea planter, who wants to build a road that will open the spice route to the village, in the backdrop of the Indian freedom struggle. "The greatest filmic experience of my life is `Road to the Sky.' No question. What was not special about that film? It's a Hollywood production. But thank God there are still some companies in Hollywood that make sensible cinema. American producers can be a nightmare. They have tremendous control over a film, unlike in India where the director calls the shots. But these guys were anything but the stereotype. They were compassionate and passionate. They were involved yet not interfering. And I'm the lynchpin of the film," he says Obviously he had great fun filming for it: "Six thousand feet, two degrees centigrade at night, playing squash every evening after shooting. I was in heaven! Away from the madding crowd, journalists," he says with a wide smile.

He's also back after a hiatus of four years when he wrote his first film, the wacky `Everybody Says I'm Fine.' He also wrote `The Whisperers.'

The big teacher

Rahul Bose is perhaps the only actor in the world who is a professional rugby player. And he's breathless about his game, which he considers a way of life in itself.

"It's the single biggest teacher of my life. It's taught me more than my parents." This year he will play in Germany, Belgium, India and then in England. At 39, Rahul has led quite a life. He was creative director at ad agency Rediffusion at 26. He quit to act.

"I loved advertising. I liked acting more. That's all."

BHUMIKA K

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