The unhurried actor

I’m not a fan of Kaka or the Badshah of Bollywood, purely as actors, but there’s no denying their stamp in the annals of Bollywood

In my head, the passing of Dilip Kumar is momentous—he was a game changer in the way that Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan are/were in varying degrees.

I’m not a fan of Kaka or the Badshah of Bollywood, purely as actors, but there’s no denying their stamp in the annals of Bollywood.

I’m not as familiar with Yusuf bhai’s work as say Bachchan’s. My Hindi movie enjoyment began in the cinema houses of Girgaum, Lamington Road and Dongri on a diet of stale samosas and ’70s formula films, so it was really the ‘Angry Young Man’ over ‘The Tragedy King’; but I do remember being absolutely transfixed by the two titans playing off each other in Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti, one evening in 1982, in the now defunct Minerva cinema house. Much the same way that Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino were pitted against each other in Heat ironically also in an airfield. Watching two giants, riffing off each other, rapport and mutual respect abound, in a heady mix, adds incredibly to viewer entertainment.

And then in Mashaal, in 1984, Dilip saab attempts to save his ailing wife played by Waheeda Rehman. His scream of pain at losing her, stayed with me for a long time. But, even in extreme grief he was ‘unhurried’. He built his desperation gradually leading to final despair.

Dilip saab had that singular quality that all great actors have—understanding how to play silences, how to use ‘the pause’ skilfully without self-indulgence, never to overdo it—the innate belief that a pause is an unspoken dialogue, that the camera, up close and personal allows the audience to see what you’re feeling, if you’re expressive enough. SRK, in contrast, feels he must twitch, and tremble and tear up to give us a window to his heart, what is loosely called overacting. Yusuf bhai trusted his instinct and the intelligence of his audiences—understanding the value of words, he didn’t just use them as raw material to enhance his acting.

I read somewhere that in Bollywood, to achieve superstardom, you have to also do comedy—apparently both Big B and SRK went into the stratosphere, the moment they tickled our funny bones.Bollywood annoys me in many ways, that we typecast actors/actresses, ‘so and so is good in intense roles’, ‘so and so is better at comedy’. To even refer to the thespian as ‘The Tragedy King’ is demeaning. Dilip Kumar was fabulous at comedy as well, because he didn’t try to be funny.

Sadly, the OTT generation wasn’t really exposed to his craft. 

In many ways, Yusuf bhai would have been the consummate OTT star. Shri Bajpayee, Shri Nawazuddin and Shri Tripathi are building a career protected from the real pressures of box office and the requirement of boyish good looks, and a chiselled body—they are feasting on roles that the younger Sri Shah, Shri Puri and Shri Rawal would have cherished, had they had Amazon Prime and Hotstar earlier in their careers—in a sense OTT is ‘a streaming Parallel Cinema’ platform, true actors are able to have a field day.

They can act with no fear of consequence beyond audience appreciation, they can emotionally risk, with scripts that challenge them. 

In OTT, skill takes precedence over stardom. Dilip Kumar was called a ‘method actor’, frankly another term I don’t easily understand.  For me, it’s important that you are believable in a role, always ‘in the moment’ and emotionally willing to take risks. Doesn’t matter to me which school you’re from—Method or Classical—the point is are you good? Are you engaging? And vitally, are you versatile?

Dilip Kumar was all of the above. RIP sir.

Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com

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