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Lover boy strikes
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Rajeev Khandelwal tells how he undergoes an image makeover with Aamir
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Imagine a fish out of water and loving it. This is what Rajeev Khandelwal is doing as he graduates from a television star with an unprecedented female fan following to an actor with UTV’s Aamir. Better known as Sujal from Bal
aji’s Kahiin To Hoga, Rajeev quit the series at the height of its popularity. Many described it as sheer arrogance but Rajeev calls it “following the heart.”
“My problem is I never feel insecure. I am not super rich and neither do I come from a rich family but I am always ready to start from scratch.” He is used to it, for once he put all his money in making a pilot episode for a channel and it didn’t get the approval. “Perhaps, that’s why I can follow my heart.”
No heroine
Rajeev says he was destined to do Aamir. Creative producer Anurag Kashyap saw his interview on a television channel and liked his attitude and confidence. But Rajeev didn’t know this. “One of my friends who happened to be a line producer gave me the script when I was boarding a flight from Mumbai to Delhi. By the time I came out of Delhi Airport, I had made up my mind.” Refusing to reveal the plot, Rajeev says I don’t know people will like it or not but the message will stay with them for some time. “I am playing a normal guy who gets entangled in the web of fanaticism and terror.” Aamir means leader, isn’t it? “True but he doesn’t want to be one. The title is quite symbolic but the character doesn’t know its meaning or the relevance. It is the circumstances which force him to take charge.” Set in the Muslim majority bylanes of Mumbai, Rajeev clears there is no Kashmir angle but the film does address Muslim persecution.
What’s more the lover boy has no heroine opposite him. “It felt bad,” quips Rajeev. “There was no scope. In fact, I was so used to my romantic image or say simply television that I had to unlearn a number of things. I joined a theatre workshop. There I realised a good actor doesn’t act. He just has to feel the character.” The shooting regimen made him forget his image. “I was not allowed to look into the monitor after the shot and mirror before the shot or run my hand through my hair, something I was used to. I was told not to look into the camera. Many times I didn’t even know where the director has put the camera. Nobody called action on the sets.
I was just told like when you reach that manhole, the camera will start rolling.”
Amidst this attempt to forget his image, Rajeev recalls how some burqa-clad women were screaming Sujal-Sujal!
“It was an amazing experience, because in such congested areas like Chor Bazaar there was hardly any opportunity to have a second take.”
Rajeev hasn’t turned his back on television completely. Having made documentaries in the past, Rajeev says nobody can fool him. “I understand the language. At the same time I have never said no to anything new and challenging. I did Time Bomb and Left Right Left. However, I don’t want to be part of something regressive which has no end. That’s why I like cinema, at least you know, you are working towards an end.” People are making a comeback at Balaji but Rajeev is in no mood to say truce. “We don’t need each other.”
ANUJ KUMAR
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