For decades the daredevils of Mumbai have been those who've set aside everything to doggedly pursue an acting career in films
Vineet Kumar Singh in a still from Mukkabaaz
At least until the late 2000s, probably two of the best read authors in Andheri West - and going further up northwards - were Rajendra Ojha (God bless his soul), and Ramesh Malhotra. Given that the only decent bookstore in the area, the legendary Landmark, shut down years ago, presumably for lack of customers, one could safely assume people in Andheri don't dig books much.
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The reason for Ojha and Malhotra's unlikely literary success was they wrote textbooks - an annually updated address/phone directory of successful folk in the film industry that young aspirants, especially those looking for acting assignments, like young Vineet Kumar Singh (who moved from Varanasi to Mumbai in 1999), would study, with a marker every morning, jotting down places to haunt, seeking work, ideally hit 16-17 offices a day and return with having been turned away by the security-guard, at worst; or made acquaintance with a chief assistant, at best.
Struggle as a verb, I guess, indicates someone having issues with accomplishing a particular task. Struggler seems an odd noun-form of that word, as if that trouble is a full-time job of its own. Those trying to make it in mainstream cinema, chiefly actors, are called "strugglers" - their work, through the day/week/month/year, involving a spate of phone/cold calls, hoping somehow the penny drops.
For, unlike with other professionals, an actor's worth gets proven only when he actually lands the job in a film; until which time, there is no way to judge/know. It's hardest to get that job, unless you have a proven résumé already. It's a chicken-egg situation. Over the years, moving homes - across Model Town, Shastri Nagar, Oshiwara, JP Road, Yari Road and other lanes in Andheri or beyond - Singh shared apartments with fellow acting aspirants from all over North India.
Having 'struggled' anywhere between six to eight years, someone or the other would call it quits, and head to their hometowns, or life's Plan B. He recalls, "Each person would find a quiet corner of the house to shed tears, so the others didn't know." Singh would help pack their bags. And since he had shared the initial twinkle in their eyes, he could feel that heavy luggage as dreams being packed away into suitcases as well.
Singh had a definite cut-off time - when he actually found a "mauka" (chance) in a movie, to begin with, no matter how long it took. If he couldn't hit a chauka then, he would quietly retreat, he thought - but not until then. And he'd been around for a decade (you can do the math on the astounding number of rejections, and days of despair).
He often accepted roles in Bhojpuri or Doordarshan serials, for ration or rent, knowing that no one in the film industry watched those shows anyway, for them to instantly prejudge when he took rounds of offices.
Much of how Bollywood's aspiration industry functions has dramatically changed over the past few years, with proper casting agents setting up offices, and casting calls for ads, TV shows, shorts, features being broadcast on WhatsApp groups for hundreds to line up, and read their lines, inside dingy rooms, even plush studios on occasion. Also, it appears, the days when baaghi (rebellious) boys would run away from small-towns, villages to become "heroes", becoming laughing stock for their extended families first, is a thing of the past.
There's firstly an entire lot of media/film-school professionals (from FTII, Jamia, NSD, etc) who live together, help each other - no different from a business-school network in corporate circles. Judging a demographic by their educational degree, some of the Bollywood acting-aspirants I know are Harvard grads, LSR/Stephen's alumni, Delhi School of Economics pass-outs, etc.
Singh is a qualified doctor with an MD in Ayurvedic medicine. He obtained this to calm his dad. At med-school, when everyone learnt he was going to "Bambai", the college rag ran his caricature on the cover, taunting his delusion: "Chala Murari Hero Banne!" This egged him on more.
You would've perhaps seen Singh first in Mahesh Manjrekar's City Of God (2010). He'd assisted Manjrekar in several movies before. But more prominently you'd recall him from Anurag Kashyap's Gangs Of Wasseypur (2012), Ugly (2014), and the short films' anthology Bombay Talkies (2013) - he plays the lead in Kashyap's segment.
For a lead role in a feature though, he wrote a boxing film himself, based on his experiences as a national-level basketball player, passed it around various filmmakers for three years, with the sole condition that he be cast as the protagonist. Kashyap agreed to re-write and direct his script, only if he "became" a boxer. The very next day, Singh, 36, sold off all his belongings and left to train for a year in Patiala, with international-level boxers!
Passion can drift either way. I'm not a huge votary of centering life on supposed dreams alone. Still, this week, as we introduced Singh (a quiet dude otherwise) as the hero of Mukkabaaz (2018), after the stellar film's screening, in his home-town Varanasi, his swag, story, homecoming, and the jubilant crowd-response was simply priceless. Of course, for everything else there's Mastercard.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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