Model turned actor bikram saluja dons the on-screen personas of al pacino and robert de niro in an ambitious book
God usually gives us dreams a size too big, so that we can grow in them. An Actors’ Inspiration is the growth of such an endeavour. Bikramjeet Singh Saluja has successfully made his aspirations a possibility. His success is best measured by how far he has come with the talent given to him.
This, taken from the five-paragraph foreword by Amitabh Bachchan, one of our finest actors along side Motilal, Balraj Sahni, Dilip Kumar, Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, begins to sound tongue-in-cheek as you turn the pages of this book.
As you flip through the pages — there is not much to read, anyway — from one side you find Saluja playing Al Pacino playing Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and from the other side Saluja playing Robert De Niro playing Jake La Motta in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull.
My grandfather, who spent his entire life in a remote village in Bihar, would never have heard of Marlon Brando. But many in his generation would have. Not just heard, they would have on occasion imagined themselves as a motorcycle rebel asked by a woman what they were rebelling against, and may have at times woken up from this reverie mumbling aloud: “Whaddya got?”
While Brando and this line from The Wild One (1953) remain etched in the memory of many generations, there have been other heroes (Bachchan, Kumar, Pacino and De Niro among them) and heroines, and scenes, and lines that have captured popular imagination. Most of us would be lying if we did not admit to sometimes imagining ourselves in our favourite actor’s role and mouthing a few lines. (This writer has often been accused of delivering cheesy Bollywood dialogues in delicately-poised real-life situations and turning them into unmitigated disasters.) But few would have thought about actually trying to live those moments — that would be taking things too far.
Not for Saluja, though. You might remember him as Karisma Kapoor’s inconsequential love interest in Fiza, a forgettable film made by Khalid Mohammed, who made a career criticising other people’s films. You may also remember him playing an actor in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Page 3, in which Konkona SenSharma and Sandhya Mridul stole the show. Right now, he is waiting for the release of 42 Kms, a film in which he is one of the actors.
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Then again, you might not remember him at all. Saluja, a successful model who decided to turn actor, has not gone very far yet in the world of acting. But he did find the space, inclination, and resources to conceptualise and “direct” this book. And the time, too — in a short interview to The Indian Express, Saluja said he spent four years putting it together.
In a candid introduction to the book, he admits: “A couple of years ago, I had found myself on an enforced sabbatical from the silver screen due to lack of quality work coming my way… The entire ordeal made me realise that in the bigger scheme of things, an actor ends up not just playing the part of a puppet but also becomes one literally… dancing to the strings held by others. Instead of getting demoralised by this harsh reality I decided to confront it head-on by becoming the puppeteer as well, in control of my own destiny.”
However, it is not sure whether Saluja has really managed to take hold of the strings in a way that will change his destiny. The first reaction to this book is a series of gasps at the enormity of the effort. It is perhaps a first-of-a-kind. The production quality is top-class, as are the sets and the art work in the background. Ronny Sequeira’s photography, too, is first rate. Saluja also managed to organise a photo exhibit version of the book at Tao Art Gallery in Mumbai, The Gallery at Sua House in Bangalore, and Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi.
Still, the book appears to be amateurish and a vast exercise in self-indulgence. The weakest link is Saluja. Even in stills, he fails to rise above his performances in the moving pictures. He tries hard to look brooding like Pacino and smouldering like De Niro, but ends up looking like someone who is trying, not being. He chose enormous boots to fill, too enormous for him, and perhaps anyone attempting this method.
Eventually, he fails to address the question that every book ought to answer: Who is it for? One wonders if many would like to spend languid moments over “Rishad Pundole, an ex-international level amateur boxer, stands lost in thought on the landing outside his father’s apartment”, or “Rajat Raina, the 36-year-old chairman of Raina group… confines himself to his son’s room after returning from work”. That is the re-interpretation of the two films.