Neeraj Kabi: Master of the medium
With two back-to-back releases in September, actor Neeraj Kabi gave the audience two choices—to either love his salt-and-pepper look as lonely film actor Amar in Kanwal Sethi’s Once Again or hate him for his searing portrayal of a butcher, Liakat, who mercilessly beats his son Idris in Dipesh Jain’s Gali Guleiyan.
But no way, the audience could afford to ignore him, not anymore.
As a method actor, he had first to develop the mindset and then work on the physicality of the role to be Amar in Once Again. “Amar is a successful commercial superstar, and at the same time, he does good films. As far as doing good films is concerned, that’s what I also do in real life. But being a commercial superstar required a different set of physicality, and it didn’t come naturally to me; I had to create it, and not just from the physical aspect but more from the mindset to avoid looking caricaturish,” he says on playing a popular actor. Calling the role in Gali Guleiyan menacing and different from Amar, he says, “Liakat is an absolute monster, and despicable.”
Over the past few years, Kabi has carved a niche for himself in the cinescape through the characters he has essayed on-screen, and the physicality of all the roles in his past cinematic outings has been different from each other. As Dr Guha or Yang Guang in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, Kabi had to grow a beard, as Ramesh Tandon in Talvar, he had to sport a big paunch, and as a Jain monk Maitreya in The Ship of Theseus, he had to lose weight, and to play Gandhi, he had to shave off his head. Once Again also happens to be his first as the romantic lead where he is seen romancing a middle-aged widow Tara Shetty played by Shefali Shah. Post this film, he insists on looking good in reel life.
“I loved looking good on screen because Amar in Once Again was unlike my previous roles that required transformation. I got to wear good clothes, and romance which was a huge high for me. I don’t want to play an old man, not for some time at least. If the producers are pitching a role that is of a 55-year-old man, I tell them, let him be 40, give me good clothes to wear, and let me look good,” says the 50-year-old with a chuckle.
Having mastered all the medium, be it films, television, theatre or digital streaming platforms, he is hopeful that all will happily co-exist in the future. He was seen as DCP Parulkar in Netflix’s Sacred Games. “Everything will have its own life and a distinct path. Films will continue to inspire and so will TV and theatre. A lot of work will happen, a lot of content will be generated.
The web has a capacity that cinema doesn’t have. Storytelling has got a new platform on the web, much bigger than cinema; the reach and requirement are far more than cinema. Cinema has limited theatres; the web has no such binding. The format of content on the web today is still like cinema, but it will change in the days to come. It will be shorter,” he quips. Kabi’s next is Rohit Karn Batra's The Field and Gautam Ghose’s One Day in the Rains, and he is currently shooting for a web series.