Way beyond okay, no, Kay Kay?

Kay Kay Menon in a still from the yet-to-be-released Netflix film, Ray

It takes a special sense of humour to make up a meaning for your name, and keep changing it as and when. The character Agastya Sen (from the book English, August) used to do that.

Actor Kay Kay Menon, I realise, has been doing it for years. Over a decade and half ago, I think he told me his name Kay Kay was Hebrew for ‘victory'. On a recent chat show, I heard him say it's Chinese for ‘victory'. Decide, bro. I had to ask him again - no, seriously, what is Kay Kay?

He confessed it's just a "mann gadhant" (self-imagined) name, for his initials KK, as in Krishna Kumar. Starting out as a movie actor, he'd even dropped Menon. He'd hold long conversations with producers in chaste Hindi. When they heard his Malayali surname, they'd ask, "Oh, but is your Hindi okay?"

Kay Kay gets his impeccable Hindi from childhood in Chandrapur, that's in the Madhya Pradesh border; his excellent command over English, from his convent education in Pune. His father was in a transferrable job, essentially within Maharashtra.

As Kay Kay, he'd initially be confused with singer Krishnnakumar Kunnath (who also goes by KK) - fielding concert queries, landing up at an early morning radio show meant for the other!

KK sang for Kay Kay on screen, once - a track called ‘Mein khuda' in Anurag Kashyap's directorial debut, Paanch. What was the original title of Paanch? Parasites. They didn't name it thus, because? In English, so nobody would get it. Maybe they should've consulted a Korean numerologist for good luck!

Paanch, a grungish noir, set around a freakish rock band, with Kay Kay as a hero with no redeeming features, is, as he describes it, "the most watched, unreleased film ever!"

I tried to show Paanch at a film festival once. There was a line outside the film's posters up, at Delhi's Siri Fort Auditorium. Despite constant assurance, the producer didn't deliver on his minor promise of passing on a copy lying with him in 2018. Can't imagine what the crew may have been through in 2003!

Kay Kay's debut as lead, Bhopal Express (1999), held even greater promise. If you consider that the feature brought together India's top ad men - brothers Prasoon and Piyush Pandey wrote it, Mahesh Mathai directed it. Hollywood's back-stage A-listers of Indian origin, Deepak Nayar and Tabrez Noorani, produced it. Who was the presenter? David Lynch!

Bhopal Express perhaps didn't globally travel as far as expected. Kay Kay would've been 33 then. It's a late-ish start, after he'd shut down his own ad firm in Dadar, before joining Naseeruddin Shah's Motley theatre group to pursue full-time acting - his original calling, as it were.

His breakout moment on stage was as the father of the nation's disgruntled son in Mahatma vs Gandhi - not particularly far from his role in the film Sarkar, based on Bal
Thackeray's life.

"You're either an actor, or you're not," self-taught Kay Kay tells me, suggesting everyone is born with a skill or two. It's our other desires that naturally take us away from it. On his Twitter bio, he calls himself, "A simulator… commonly called an actor."

Which expresses his point about acting being make-believe ("about making it believable") - rather than fantastical, or realistic. He also considers performance in theatre and cinema as distinct. In theatre, he says, the actors reach out to the audience. In film, it's the reverse; given camera and other tools.

Kay Kay also doesn't consider himself a "dialogue-baaz" actor. His most watched YouTube clips still are monologues from Shaurya (adapted without credit from A Few Good Men), and Gulaal, where he spontaneously came up with the iconic line, "Jack & Jill… Maa ka b''''''''!"

There's a centeredness and stoicism to Kay Kay's worldview, which you'll find consistent over two decades. That's rare. When he chose acting as a career, he laid down personal rules - that he wouldn't walk with a background score, or carry paps around. Kay Kay has an MBA in marketing.

Of course showbiz works on its showiness, and business/game of theatrical releases. OTTs have punctured both, leveling the field - giving the public a direct button to decide on pictures/people they like. Kay Kay's latest release Ray (2021) would instantly premiere in 190 countries through Netflix. Few would've watched his undervalued, The Ghazi Attack (2017), for showbiz constraints alone.

A lifestyle choice to steer away from stardom frills may be a reason the tall, dark, sharply built as a blade, Kay Kay, is often deemed an "underrated actor".

Obviously that's untrue. Look up his filmography - Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Black Friday, Haider, Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd, Life in a Metro…

He made his web debut with the high-octane thriller series Special Ops (2020). Lately, he jokes, "The young lot look at me on screen, and say, hmmm, I think you have great potential!"

What's that one under-watched movie they should thereafter discover? For his performance alone, I'd say The Stoneman Murders. For a film, he suggests, "The crazy man (late) Pankaj Advani's Sankat City - that was a tribute to '80s tacky cinema!"

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14

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