It is rather rare but sometimes I get extraordinarily lucky and find inspiration in the city too. My character in The Lunchbox, a charming, ever-smiling orphan called Shaikh, is the perfect example of this. In the film he would always come up and say to Saajan Fernandes—who was played by Irrfan Khan—with a beaming smile, ‘Kaise hain, sir?’ (How are you?) If you met my good friend Mukesh Bhatt, who also happens to be an actor, you will realize within minutes that I had poured his entire demeanour into the character of Shaikh.
Mukesh was my roommate in Mira Road. In the morning when I would head downstairs from my flat to the paan shop for my first cigarette of the day, I’d find him already there, surrounded by a little cloud of smoke.
‘Arrey, sir! How are you, sir?’ Instantly he would greet me with a warm smile while puffing away.
Behenchod, we just met minutes ago upstairs. What is this greeting for?’ I’d retort.
‘Arrey, sir. But whenever people meet, they say hi-hello or not?’ he would explain innocently. ‘Kalte hain na? Kalte hain na?’ (Right, right?) He would ask the rhetorical question with his adorable slight stammer.
Really, every single time we met, he would greet me just like Shaikh did in the film.
We were five of us living together in that tiny room in Mira Road. In one corner of the room, atop a little shelf was a small idol of Ganpati Baba. Every morning after his shower, Mukesh would emerge from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, droplets still on his body, and head straight to the idol. He would quickly utter some mantras, parts of which he knew but most of which he had forgotten. He would fill up those blanks with melodious sound effects like tana-nana and conclude them with a very energetic hoooollllll! He was from Bihar, and like many Biharis, he too had a tough time pronouncing the rolling ‘r’ sounds correctly, so there would be a cute, childlike lisping of the ‘l’ sound instead. His stammering also included a range of several other strong phonic Hindi alphabets, which a lot of people struggle to pronounce.
His final mantra went something like:
Tana-nana tana-nana Ganpati Bappa
Tana-nana tana-nana tana-nana
Hooooollllll!
Tana-nana tana-nana Ganpati Bappa.
Tana-nana tana-nana tana-nana
Hooooollllll!
By the time The Lunchbox released I had moved out, and into my new place at Yari Road. Many people sent me messages appreciating my performance, saying things like ‘Very good, Nawaz’, or ‘You did an awesome job, Nawaz’. Mukesh too sent me a text, which stood out of this crowd of applause.
‘I saw Lunchbox. Thank you.’ Obviously, it was curt because he knew that this behenchod Nawaz had totally taken his case and caricatured him.
Soon after The Lunchbox was released Mukesh got offered a role in a TV serial. Delighted, he went to the shoot, gave a shot in which he played a postman riding a bicycle and handing out mail. And confidently, in his trademark warm, polite style and cute lisp, delivered the dialogue: ‘Namaskar, Dadiji. Yahan se guzar laha tha toh socha aapki chitthi deta chaloon.’ (Greetings, Granny. I was passing by, so thought I’d deliver your letter to you.)
‘Cut!’ the director screamed abruptly.
‘What happened, sir?’ asked Mukesh, surprised.
‘Do it again,’ said the director.
‘All right,’ said Mukesh.
He mounted the bicycle again, rode down the street, rang the doorbell, the grandmother emerged, he handed her the letter and delivered the same dialogue again with his typical stutter.
‘Cut!’ again the director interrupted.
‘What happened, sir?’ the baffled actor asked the director.
‘Do it again, yaar. Don’t do all this.’
‘Don’t do what all, sir?’ Mukesh asked.
‘All this. Don’t do all this. Nawaz has already done all this in Lunchbox,’ the director explained as if it was the most obvious thing. ‘Nawaz has already done this character, yaar. Why are you repeating it? Why are you copying him? You leave it. You don’t do this, please. Do something else, please.’
Mukesh remains a struggling actor. About two years ago, I was driving in my car when I saw him standing at Aaram Nagar. My heart melted instantly at the sight of my old friend. I asked the driver to stop the car and got out.
‘Arrey, Mukesh, yaar! How are you, my buddy?’ I greeted him with a broad smile, my hand grabbing his arm.
‘Arrey, choliye, choliye (leave, leave),’ he responded in anger, removing my arm.
‘Aapne kab ma–behen ki kadar ki? Aapne toh meri ma–behen sab ek kar di!’ (You have totally screwed me up. Fuck off!)
‘Maine kahan ma–behen ek kar di? Kya kiya maine? (What did I do?),’ I asked, bewildered as to what I had done for him to react like this.
‘Of course, you have. Wherever I go, people say don’t do that character. Don’t play that. What the fuck! What the hell have you done? This is not done. This is no way!’
‘Okay, Mukesh. I will meet you later,’ I said timidly, chickening out and fleeing the uncomfortable scene.
During the days of struggle, one day, around 2008, we walked into a film production office for a role. It had the actress Tabu playing the lead role. The director needed two police constables. When he saw us, he was very impressed because we already looked like stereotypical havildars. ‘Very good, very good,’ he said. ‘Now improvise a little scene for me and you two have an excellent chance of bagging the role.’
The scene was about the two of us living in the Thane police station itself, with our buffaloes tied up nearby. We cook our food there. We have washed our clothes and hung them out to dry on a clothes line. A woman would walk in, this would be the
