VACATIONS

For any fervent traveller, a road of any kind is a summon to adventure. Nothing can beat wandering off the beaten path and enjoying the many small things that make any journey memorable. Here’s what six B’town actors have to say of their

SCOTTISH SUPRRISE

“Punjab instantly takes you from rice and yellow mustard fields at daytime to courtyards filled with charpoys at night. It is home to people with large hearts and it was a longing to enjoy this with my pet dog Sakhi that drove me right into the heart of the state.

I explored and experienced the fields, the crisp, fresh air and the glorious countryside.

Nature outspread its wonders with beautiful purple flowers and silence interrupted by birdsong. I enjoyed aloo parathas loaded with safed makhan. Absorbed entirely in rustic pleasures, we returned to Chandigarh after three days with the desire to do this again soon.”

“On a work trip that we combined with pleasure, we drove through North-east India for three months. My favourite part of the trip was landing in Assam during the Bihu festival, dancing and eating with the locals. That’s the best part of a road trip: you can stop and soak in whatever you like without an agenda.

As a wild life enthusiast, I absolutely loved Kaziranga, and I equally loved Mawlynnong, supposedly Asia’s cleanest village.”

The ban on 59 Chinese apps is what everyone is talking about, on and off social media. And Tiktok is hogging the limelight.

As someone who uses it frequently, my first reaction to this ban was disbelief. There has been no other app on this list of banned apps that has stirred as much debate and emotion. And now that Tiktok may be a thing of the past, influencers are finding their loyalties shifting. I’ve already started making longer videos that are horizontal and not the Tiktok-focused format I’m used to.

Instagram will stay a dominant platform, but how did Tiktok become such an integral part of India’s social media DNA?

The average Tiktok user hardly realises the businesses, MNCS and brand deals that exist due to Tiktok. People don’t know that most creators have multiple managers and agencies. Mostly they wonder how influencers earn money via this app. All of which has been disrupted now.

As an actor and entrepreneur, I feel I had already gained most of what I needed from Tiktok. It

Screenshots from Paras Tomar's Tiktok videos, where he has over three million followers helped me launch my Ayurvedic skincare brand, Nuskhe by

Paras – I had over three million followers on the app. Add to that the viewers who may just watch the video! Today, my brand is worth more than ~70 crore and I no longer need that ~40,000 brand collaboration any more. So, for everyone who says the medium is shady, I’m living proof that social media can build a business.

Before Tiktok, social media was full of photos and videos of deeply aspirational lifestyles – designer wear and holiday pictures. Some to share, some to brag and some to make our lives look fancier than they perhaps were. Tiktok changed that as we got a peek into real lives.

Why then, was a ‘cringe content’ factor associated with Tiktok?

First, that wasn’t the opinion of the majority. The word ‘cringe’ was being used by those browsing the app while sitting in their sea-facing balconies, mocking what they can’t appreciate. Those who belong to a higher social-economic background and disapprove of the fact that today anyone and everyone can become a “star.” Because traditionally, stars have to be rich and famous, right? If they aren’t rich and come from a small town, how could they possibly be called stars? But one person’s cringe is another person’s fun.

In the last few days, I’ve come across people saying they are happy that kids “won’t be able to earn money by simply having fun.” What’s ironic is that just 10 days ago, social media was flooded with messages of love, compassion and people making it on their own. And yet, when kids from remote parts of the country try to carve a niche for themselves, they are mocked.

I think hypocrisy has another name – it’s ‘cringe’.

Second, people need to understand that there was never a Youtube vs Tiktok debate. It was a clash between people who made the most of that opportunity. And it was fuelled by people showing a

The obvious temptations for an actor to do a double role are precisely those temptations that one should avoid.

One major temptation is to show your range as an actor and dazzle the audience. Most actors while attempting a double role often mark out two different sets of mannerisms first and build on those, and the temptation is to wow the audience with your amazing range. I didn’t go down that road. Whether they are twins, whether it’s a double role, I didn’t put my focus on any of that. For me these were two separate roles that I was playing. I approached each of the characters as I would approach any other character in a film.

Give me the backstory, build a biography from the age of zero to where the character is in the scene, figure out the character’s childhood, growing up years, friend choices, musical likes, culinary preferences, go into their family lives, school lives, sexual lives, sexual orientation, all of that. I went into this journey for both Indranil and Mahendra (in Bulbbul). I was never anxious about showing the difference. I played them the way each demanded I play them.

So, getting down to the roles themselves. After setting the biography of the character, in every film I think of one or two keywords that I have to say to myself before I get onto the set. With Indranil it was fatigue and the mantle of responsibility. While for Mahendra, it was wonder.

His is arrested development. His first reaction to everything is just that of wonder. He doesn’t have a thought in his mind that lasts for more than maybe five seconds.

He was the more difficult character to play. For the danger in playing such characters is that of hamming. These kinds of characters very easily lend themselves into becoming caricatures. So that challenge was how do you swallow him and when you act him you don’t thrust him down the audience’s throat, audiences only need to smell his essence. A massive amount of credit goes to Anvita. She has used him sparingly.

It is interesting that most of the comments I have got are about how it didn’t look like Rahul Bose was playing this role. We were aware that however well Indranil was being played, he was being played by Rahul Bose, they would say.

But almost all the feedback was that while watching Mahendra they completely forgot it was I who was playing him. With Mahendra, my approach was to capture his total lack of thought. He doesn’t have a cerebral bone in his body. He lives for and lives in the moment. But when it came to the rape scene, the animalistic impulses of a 40-year-old trapped about the double role, then you are free as an actor and there is just so much to do for each of those roles!

With Indranil, it was equally complex, but on a different level. He’s quite civilised. He doesn’t force himself sexually on his child bride. He is patient and understanding when he says

‘pati aur devar ke beech ka farq tum samajh jaogi’. He looks at his errant brother fondly but with a stentorian eye. But his one weakness is jealousy. And that is where Paoli Dam’s character Binodini drives the stiletto knife deeper and deeper into him. Now we see a rapidly changing person, till finally, and this was the real challenge, we bridge the graph from jealousy and anger as he walks away from the fireplace, to rage and violence by the time he reaches Bulbbul in the bathroom. I knew people would be shocked by the sudden emergence of his violent streak, so I had to give them a foreshadowing in his personality – this his simmering, growing jealousy – such that the violence, though shocking, seems plausible in the character arc. Maybe Indranil himself was illprepared