BENGALURU: If serendipity got him the role of Amit Chatterji in A Suitable Boy, it was once again a call from out of the blue that bagged artiste Mikhail Sen an audio book, The Waiter by Ajay Chowdhury, which won the Harvill Secker Prize for Crime Fiction. After a “fascinating year”, Sen is now venturing into new spaces – writing and doing audiobooks, both of which he enjoys very much. “I remember it was a phone call out of the blue while I was back home in Bengaluru when I was asked to do a demo read, and my dad whose Bengali is a lot better than mine, helped me record it,” he says.
Much has changed in the last one year for Sen, whose Netflix series, A Suitable Boy, played a key role in that. “Post A Suitable Boy, (I) felt a bit strange but it was also quite fun to get recognised when I was out and watching people stare intently as they tried to place me,” says Sen about the show which opened in the UK last year in the middle of the pandemic.
Coming back to the audio book, it revolves around a disgraced Kolkata detective, Kamil Rahman, who ends up working as a waiter in a restaurant in Brick Lane, London. As Sen puts it, the fast-paced,
funny murder mystery has all the “moshla” (masala) and twists that will keep you on your toes. The exciting and fun thing about reading an audiobook for him is getting to play all the characters in the story. “Finding their voice, accent and who they are is really important, so I always read the book at least once (if not twice) before I go into the studio. What’s also useful is that, with this one, I knew both worlds quite well. Kolkata is where my father’s side of the family is from, and London is where I live,” he says.
While voice training was something he did at drama school and still uses some exercises, especially on stage, audio work, he feels, isn’t about projection. “You’ve got extremely sensitive mics. It’s almost about making the mic your friend and telling your friend the story,” he says, adding that audiobooks have tremendous scope in today’s world.
How has the pandemic affected the life and livelihood of artistes? “Being an artiste prepares you for the uncertainty of life. The pandemic brought an immense amount of insecurity with it. I can only speak for myself by saying that I went through all of that uncertainty and insecurity and it taught me to surrender more. I’m not saying I’ve mastered it, but there have been many lessons. The biggest one is to take nothing for granted and try and enjoy every moment,” says Sen, who did a short film in April with the English National Opera which is part of their educational outreach programme. “I don’t do any singing (thankfully) but play a young composer who stumbles on a piece of music. There’s another project that will be out in 2022,” says Sen while being discreet.