How to Go From Boyish to Byomkesh-Sushant

Sushant Singh Rajput seems both a boy and a grown man at once, easygoing one moment and intense the next. A sense of youthful possibility, even vulnerability, has hovered over the characters he's played in his three films so far: idealistic Ishaan in Kai Po Che!, commitment-phobic Raghu in Shudhh Desi Romance and most recently, honest, tentative Sarfaraz in PK. But the characters he's played leave you quite unprepared for the person behind them.

Rajput, 29, shares a large apartment in Malad, in the northern suburbs of Mumbai, with actor Ankita Lokhande and their two plump, beige Labradors. One greets me at the door. Rajput quickly appears on its heels to usher me past its friendly (and moist) nose.

His fourth film, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! (DBB) is set to release on April 3. It has been produced by Yashraj Films (YRF or "vyaareff" as Rajput says with relish through our conversation) and directed by Dibakar Banerjee. ''The closest synonym I have for happiness is excitement,'' Rajput tells me in anticipation of the new release.

While Rajput finishes his lunch in the sunlit dining room, I wait in the den I'm shown into. It is dark here, even at 2pm. An LCD television that spans a wall at one end is almost invisible in the gloom. Air conditioning, turned up high, adds to the sense of winter, although Mumbai is reeling in the early summer heat outside.

Patches of red and white leather on black bean bags and a black couch are sharply spotlit by overhead lights. Packs of Marlboro cigarettes and a lighter are neatly arranged on the center table in an otherwise casually untidy room. In a cosy corner is a bookshelf along a wall, towards which I wander.

Directly in my gaze, despite the tricky lighting, are books on cinema, some still in their plastic wrapping. Taped next to them is a note from Raju Hirani, director of PK, in which he commends the actor on his interest in the filmmaking process and offers these books to help him understand it further.        

There are also some biographies and autobiographies of successful people, including Shah Rukh Khan. To the left, I discover a stash of Enid Blyton's Hardy Boys and RL Stein's Goosebumps series. Rajput joins me at the bookshelf and admits, grinning, to still dipping into his favorite children's fiction. As an afterthought, he adds that Milan Kundera, Philip Roth and Haruki Murakami are on his current reading list.

In person, Rajput comes across as mildly friendly and somewhat reserved. He's dressed in a green T-shirt tucked into a pair of jeans, with an indigo peaked cap clapped over his shoulder-length, uncombed hair. He tends to shift his weight rhythmically, restlessly, from one foot to the other, reminding me of his history as a trained dancer.

In the third year of his Engineering degree at Delhi College of Engineering, Rajput trained with and then became a dancer with Shiamak Davar's troupe. With the company, he performed at the opening of the 2006 Commonwealth Games and at the 51st Filmfare Awards. Davar saw the strains of an actor in his young dancer and urged a step in that direction. So Rajput auditioned for legendary drama teacher Barry John's acting classes in Delhi and made a B' when everyone else made C'. All this excited him enough to drop out of college altogether and move to Mumbai, where he next joined Nadira Babbar's Ekjute theater company and the Ashley Lobo dance company.

When I insist he recall a memory from those days, he cautions me, "This may sound filmy."

"In 2006, I was to dance with Shiamak's troupe behind film stars at the 51st  Filmfare Awards. I visited YRF Studio for rehearsals. When the security guards stopped me at the gate to write my name and told me which way to go, a strong desire came over me. One day, I promised myself, I will come here as an actor. No one will ask me to register my name. No one will tell me where I can or cannot go. Today this has come true... I can have bigger dreams and just from sheer belief, I can make them happen."

Finally a full-fledged actor on the theater stage, he was spotted' by an executive from Balaji Telefilms and asked to audition for a television soap in 2008 - Kis Desh Mein Hai Meraa Dil, in which he went on to act. Rajput also acted inPavitra Rishta and performed on dance shows like Jhalak Dikhlaa Jaa.

"When I was looking for a young, rising star to cast as a youthful, upcoming Byomkesh on his first case in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy," says director Dibakar Banerjee, "I watched his TV serials. I realized that Sushant is understated and subtle. Now, any actor who can do that on afternoon soap has to have some original thinking! It's clear he's trying to do things on his own."   

In 2013, Rajput made his film debut with Kai Po Che!, playing one of three main leads. Of them, it was Rajput who leapt onto the footboard of mainstream cinema, going on to star with Parineeti Chopra and Rishi Kapoor in YRF's Shudhh Desi Romance.

PK followed in December 2014. While superstar Aamir Khan is PK, the film's main character, Rajput as Anushka Sharma's dewy-eyed Pakistani boyfriend also got ample attention. He is now at a key junction of his career, trying to cement his rise with DBB.

"My film is a mix of kinetic action and the usual cerebral detective pursuit. At the same time, it is a period film - quite a challenge for any actor playing the lead," Dibakar Banerjee says. "Bollywood conventions of acting generally deal with stereotype templates. For a period film, actors acquire an artificial, imagined way of speaking, which they think is how people spoke in those days..."

I've accosted Banerjee at Fiesta, a sound studio in Andheri West, where he's making the final sound mix of DBB. Banerjee seems like a stranger to the bright afternoon light. He's in a rumpled black T-shirt and blue jeans, eyes swollen and red behind his trademark black spectacles. He says he's been working nights to meet DBB's April 3 release date. He takes some time out for a cigarette and sweet black tea, and to discuss Rajput with me.

"Sushant plays an understated detective, analyzing things in his head," he says. "At the same time, he's a young and dynamic Byomkesh, finding his feet in the world. So he had to essay subtlety, vulnerability and restless energy at once. A detective is commonly seen as one who perceives more than others and imparts the wisdom of his theories. But this detective is making mistakes. He's learning the ropes... encountering the big bad world for the first time." This kind of fluid character seems a natural fit for Rajput.

Back at his den, Rajput and I settle down to chat on the black sofa. I begin with a somewhat innocuous question and am thrown by the outpour it evokes: Rajput tells his story as a narrative of both deep suffering and spiraling achievement.    

Why did some of the top directors in Hindi cinema - Abhishek Kapoor, Maneesh Sharma, Raju Hirani and Dibakar Banerjee - cast him in their films? What do they see in him? So many young people come to Mumbai to become actors, and so few "make it". Is he just plain lucky?

"Many have asked me this question," he begins. "I'm not a very good actor. Nor am I very good looking. Besides, when I made my debut in Kai Po Che! I was told that the audience has a prejudice against TV actors." Two things about him, he continues, possibly drew the interest of directors. The first is his passion, his desire to learn. The second is an intuitive understanding of emotion. The third, I'd add, is a seeming ordinariness that can portray characters we relate to.

Rajput was born in a middle-class family in Patna, the fifth of five children, the only son. His parents struggled to educate them. They worried about saving money for their four daughters' marriages. "They would not have known it, but I sensed their struggle to provide for us, and their determination to give us the best that they could," Rajput recalls. Two months before his Class 12 Board exams, his mother passed away. He strongly links his sensitivity to emotion to this early loss. "When you lose someone close, you don't know how to react. I didn't cry for two days after I lost my mum. Going through pain makes you somehow sensitive to what's real - and what's not."

Rajput then steps back into a practiced, almost rehearsed conversation again. "As a trained actor, you are aware of certain tools you can use on the off-days when you're not feeling anything. You can pretend to the level of belief and convince people. But at some point, the audience sees through. My upbringing and things I experienced early on make the use of these tools mostly unnecessary. If I have to play a flamboyant character, I might use the tools...I'm not flamboyant by nature. But whatever strata of society you belong to, basic human emotions are the same. The individual filmmaker's view, his grammar, the narrative option he takes, differs. The conflict or intent of the film differs. But the human emotions," he claps lightly, "are the same."  

Banerjee speaks not of what Rajput projects but what he reins in as an actor. He says it was Rajput's involuntary quality of restraint that first drew him to the actor. "I find, in Sushant, a lot of vulnerability, which he's trying to hide," says Banerjee. "There's a constant conflict between confidence and nervousness. Perhaps the fact that he is not a Bollywood insider adds to this. He danced, some years ago, in the last row of dancers behind Shah Rukh [Khan] at a film award ceremony. He is from a middle-class family that gives a lot of value to education. While he was in college he was crazy enough to gate crash a wedding party every day. He would dance and eat food at the buffet. Even if he doesn't tell these stories, you can see them in him...'

"All the things he tries to hide are very apparent, in an interesting way. And what you need in an actor - my definition of a good watchable star - is that even when he's not doing anything in the scene, he should be interesting to watch. He might be looking into space (which a detective might do while he's thinking) and still be interesting. The quality of being interesting even when you're not doing anything comes from what's playing out behind the mask."

The realities that sharpened Rajput's perception of human emotion are past. He's a star now. Bollywood's rarified zones are spaces that prod growth in a different direction. Rajput mentions carefully studying Robert Greene's book The 48 Laws of Power, reportedly one of the most requested books in American prison libraries and popular with American musicians like 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes and Jay Z. I'm quick to ask if he applies what he's learned from the book in his dealings in the film industry. "No, I don't apply them," he says. "But they help me recognize power play at work." Greene formulated some of his ideas in 48 Laws while working as a writer in Hollywood.

"All actors," Rajput adds, "have a very strong sense of their own personality...this is a mix of personal aspiration, what we want to be perceived as, and what we actually think we are. But actors know that you have to break that image, let go, and become a child again. As kids we'd dance quite happily before 15 people because we didn't take ourselves seriously. But when an actor becomes a superstar, others take him very seriously. His personal aspirations rise and then he gets trapped in that image. But if you're genuinely curious and want to explore, you remember to shatter the mold and become childlike again. It's tough to do because these are two extreme states of your personality that you pit against each other."

It is just two years since he made it' to the big screen. Has much changed? "Well, one thing has not. I have a constant, inherent feeling of insecurity because of seeing my mother go so early on in my life," he says. "Within [me] is a pendulum that swings between determined ambition and knowing that all this is transitory, that I will lose everything one day."

As the mood in the already dim room plummets, Rajput again flips acrobatically out. He says suddenly that he also has a sense of being in the maelstrom of an upwardly spiralling destiny: when he decides to achieve something, 99 out of 100 times, he succeeds. "It started after my mother's death. She passed away two months before my 12th standard final exams. She went in December. The whole of January I did not study. I would sit at my study table and not think of anything. Not even of her. In the first week of February, I flunked the prelim exams, though I'd always been an above average student.'

"A relative I will not name, who claims he never said this, upbraided me. He said to his two young children who were in the room with us, Don't grow up and be like him.' The one thing I vividly remember of my mother is that she worried that people would call me a spoilt brat, born, as I was, after four daughters. Everybody tells me you are pampering your son,' she'd say. Yeh nalayak niklega [He'll turn out to be the delinquent]. So please don't let me down.' That relative's words were like a wake-up call. My Board exams and the Engineering entrance exams were just three weeks away. In those three weeks, I'd crawl under my bed - for no other reason than to concentrate better - pile my books by my elbows, pull the table lamp under to light the space, and study. I cleared each and every entrance exam. I was ranked seventh [in the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination]. This was my first boost of success. That's when I thought: I can do it. There have been many achievements, small and big, but I feel like I'm in an upward spiral."

So is he a great actor or has he hitched a ride on an upward spiral of luck? Banerjee brushes off both propositions.

"I don't think greatness is something you can define in the present," he says. "Greatness can be defined only when you have a large body of work to show. I would say that Sushant, for two reasons, is a very good actor. One is that he tries to act well, and trying is half the job done. The second thing is that he's taking immense pains to forget all the conventions that Bollywood imposes on you. Bollywood conventions propose that the actor be more conscious of how he looks [in] saying something, instead of being more conscious of how he feels doing something.'

"Then, Sushant is essentially a private person which decreases the baggage of interference, of noise. Bollywood loves to continuously bombard you with useless information, noise, gossip and shop talk. These do nothing but divert you from what you're actually trying to do. It raises your anxiety levels and diminishes the quality of work. Sushant tries to insulate himself from all this."

Rajput seems to have retained that habit of focus of the boy who crawled under his bed with a lamp to study. I ask both actor and director about how they prepared for the role of a detective in 1943. 

"Byomkesh, a young Bengali Maths graduate from 1943 Calcutta, is more or less an unknown quantity for Sushant, a young man from Patna and Delhi in 2015," Banerjee says. "We had to do a lot of research."

Did they watch older film and television depictions of Byomkesh Bakshy? "No, we decided consciously not to. We started with the book, which is the source of the character, then moved on to my interpretation. We went to Kolkata. There we walked through the streets anonymously for days on end, watching people. We visited families, talked with them, listened to stories from their lives, the history and memories that give you an idea of what that world was about. We watched contemporary Kolkata and researched historical Calcutta. The Byomkesh that Sushant essays is a composite of both...Because some things change with time, and some things don't."

On a more personal note, Banerjee adds, "Sushant is an insomniac. He'd be up at night making notes on each and every dialogue, each and every movement. I liked that because long ago when I didn't know much about filmmaking, and I was making a film, I knew I had to rely more on preparation. Preparation prepares you until your instinct comes into play. Instinct is really nothing but subconscious knowledge, which you might not be aware of having acquired. Anyway, his approach took a huge load off me. Abhay Deol, my other favorite actor, is instinctive. He doesn't go into research. That's his style. But Sushant mixes instinct with research."

"First you work on the similarities between you and the actor's character," Rajput explains of his process. "Then for the next few weeks you work consciously on the dissimilarities between you and the character, till they too become a part of you. Like while preparing for DBB, I'd sit with my legs crossed, one hand moving somewhat languorously as I spoke. I'd punctuate my everyday sentences differently - in the way I'd have to deliver my dialogue. I got comfortable with it because I did it consciously for so many days." He also claims that he kept his phone off for eight months while preparing for the role.

Did that kind of thing help, I ask. He replies in earnest. "In the film industry, people think doing things like this make you a good actor. But it doesn't. It makes you a serious and courageous actor. These are the first steps I take to do my work seriously. Even then I don't know if the work will shape up right or not."

When I recall this to Banerjee, he says, "That's a startling admission. It shows that Sushant is not carried away simply by his process of preparation. We tend to do that too in Bollywood...That's a huge insight into his vigilance.'

"Once during the shoot I decided to change the order of the shoot - shoot one part of the scene before the other. At first Sushant said okay, but later he came to my hotel room and said, Let's not shoot this first. I haven't prepared.' So we didn't shoot. I think what that reflects is that he respects a process, he cares about it. I respect anyone who respects a process. It shows that you are vigilant, you're very sincere."

This seems to extend to his vaunted ordinaryness. Rajput says he works hard even on being spontaneous. 

"Spontaneity has to change for each character we play," he says, "because each character is different. In Shudhh Desi Romance, my character was not a confident guy. An actor, when he hears "Action!" tends to attack the scene. But when you have to essay an inconfident character, you have to hold back. It's a paradox. Someone remarked that I was so confident in Kai Po Che!, but was not so in Shudhh Desi Romance. But that's exactly what I wanted the audience to experience!"

"I'd give him dual emotions to work with," Banerjee says of training him for playing Byomkesh. "In Bollywood they say, this is a sad scene. Everyone acts sad. But the reality of human emotion is: you may be feeling sad and trying to hide it. Or you may be feeling sad and feeling angry about feeling sad! True acting essentially involves an understanding of how the human psyche is dealing with two or three conflicting emotions at every point. We need good actors to essay the essential, multi-planar existence of human beings. So we would do this as an exercise. At first Sushant was a bit thrown, but in a little while he understood completely what I was saying."

Red, white and black exist not just on Rajput's sofas and bean bags. They are part of the secret polarities that make up this "rising star", as Banerjee is fond of calling him.

Banerjee, for his part, is planning further investment in Sushant Singh Rajput. "Sushant would have been a failure as an actor in 1943; he speaks so softly," Banerjee grins. "At that time they hired actors based on their voice throw. I'm seriously thinking of investing in research, to get a mike invented especially for Sushant."

But DBB is already in the cans, I puzzle.

"For DBB2," he says, happily, "if DBB1 works at the box office!"  

Chatura Rao is a novelist and freelance writer. Her books include Nabiya, Meanwhile Upriver,Amie and the Chawl of Colour and Growing Up in Pandupur.