HIS college life was all about having masti but ‘kabhi kabhi padaye bhi ho jaati thi’, as actor Samir Dattani would like me to believe. A commerce student at HR Collge,Mumbai, Samir was always up to some mischief. “I’d like to believe that I was a good student but it won’t be true,” he confesses. Coming from a business family, it was obvious for Samir to pick up business studies and economics as his subjects in college. The actor says he always knew he wanted to get into his family business until he joined college, and things took a U-turn. His chocolate boy looks got noticed and he started modelling. He was even offered his first film in the second year of his college.
“But my dad wanted me to finish my studies,” he says as a matter of fact. That’s when he had to manage both.”I would attend my lectures in the morning and rush to Film City for my shoots,” remembers the actor.
Samir calls the first three years of his college the best time of his life, which he can’t forget, as he puts it,”I was always into extra circular activities and would use it to my advantage to bunk college. I’d be hanging out with my friends, but would tell my professor that I was busy practising tennis or skating. I used to play pranks but somehow never got caught. I don’t know why.” Did his innocent looks work in his favour? “You can say so. Whatever be the reason, it was good for me. You can say that I had a good reputation, when all my friends were scolded for what we had done, I was the only one who was spared. Wasn’t that cool?" he asks me.
College was a lot more fun for him than school. “In school, you are trying to grow up, whereas in college,you’ve got everything — car,money and not to forget, girls. The actor had his first relationship during that time to which he immediately adds: “But the meaning of love has changed from me now. It has become more idealistic.” And not just the meaning of love, his outlook towards life has also undergone a change. “When I look back, I found all those things I did during college funny. But that’s how one grows. Isn’t it?” he sums up on a philosophical note.
gera@epmltd.com