I’ve worked in two films and have a total screen time of 14 seconds combined. So I can’t tell whether I’m a method actor or a meth actor.
For my first three seconds of acting, I came under the category called junior artiste — a term I took offence to in one day of being one. We’re the humans in the background pretending to be humans while the hero is being a hero. It’s a tough job — you have to eat the same fake ice cream with the same joy for 53 retakes of a hero struggling to say, ‘Hello, my name is Rajesh’. When the hero messes up, he gets a retake. But if a junior artiste does the same, he is taken out.
That’s when I realised — the difference between a junior artiste and an actor isn’t talent, it’s the treatment.
It was my debut, so I was enjoying it all. Then lunch was shouted upon us, and we marched like sheep to the rice-and-dal section. It was summer, and I’m Telugu — I need curd. I spotted some, but it was in another section where the one-dialogue actors and ex-dreamer assistants ate.
So I went there and said, ‘Anna, curd’. He said, ‘Curd is not there’. I pointed, ‘But it’s right here’. He said, ‘This is not for you’.
I went home and ate Greek yogurt with rice just to tell my hurt little gut, ‘Relax, this is an experiment, not your life’.
Within three days, I was promoted to artiste. I had one dialogue — took six takes — but I was more excited to face the curd counter guy. Yesterday, he was scissors and I was paper. Today, I was rock.
I went there and asked for curd, curious what he’d say. He looked somewhere, someone nodded slowly — like he was given an OTP via telepathy — and the counter guy asked, ‘Which type of curd? Curd chutney? Lassi? Raita? Heritage or Jersey?’
The curd cooled me down. I sat on a random chair and dozed off — only to be woken by an assistant yelling, ‘You’re sitting on the director’s chair!’ I asked, ‘Is his name written on it?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ and showed me.
Now I had tasted the life of a junior artiste and an artiste. The only thing left was star treatment.
I was also a joke writer for that movie, so I sat inside the vanity van working with the main lead. For lunch, I ate what the highest-paid guy in the project ate.
And now, the curd guy was at the vanity. He saw me and was shocked — he probably thought I was some important person roaming in disguise to check whether curd was being served properly or not.
He asked, ‘Which curd and from which animal, sir — goat, cow, unicorn, dragon, or whale?’
He had clearly not seen a guy grow from junior artiste to writer in a week. For him, I grew faster than Nawazuddin did in his career.
He asked, ‘What do you need?’ And now that I was in the hero’s star zone, I became humble too. I said, ‘Curd’.
Even though we were inside the van, he got down, took another van, went to a shop, and brought back the very curd I asked for.
Is being an actor about sleepless nights and the road less taken? Yes. But can you sleep well with curd? Also yes. Then why not give it to everyone? The movie budget is in crores — the curd budget isn’t even Rs 500.
Sandesh
@msgfromsandesh
(This comedian is here to tell funny stories about Hyderabad)
(The writer’s views are his own)
