Randeep Hooda: The Quicksilver Star

Ever since he made a mark in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding in 2001, as Rahul, the cousin from Muscat, Randeep Hooda has been the secondary actor trapped in a leading man’s body. In a film industry where preparing for a role usually involves muscle building and grooming lessons, Hooda believes in living his screen persona, whether it is remaining unwashed for sever­al days to get into character for the runaway truck driver in Highway (2014); starving himself for Sarbjit (2016), where he played an Indian political prisoner in Pakistan; or shaving himself bald several times during the course of shooting his latest release Swatantra Veer Savarkar.

A biopic of the controversial Hindutva ideologue, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the movie opened to much acclaim for Hooda’s performance and for its conviction. It has not pleased the liberals who see it as an affront to the Congress and as an apology for the infamous apologist, but no one has doubted either Hooda’s commitment as an actor or director. His journey with Savarkar started when the movie was offered to him as an actor. “I did not know much about him, except for the usual armed revolution and his imprisonment at Kaala Pani. The more I read, I realised he and several armed revolutionaries had been left out of our history books. So, I dug deeper, read archival material, Vikram Sampath’s books, Vaibhav Purandare’s book. And then I started reading Savarkar himself,” he says.

It opened his eyes, he says. As a result, the film spends considerable time in London’s India House of the 1920s, chronicling the life and times of the band of revolutionar­ies led by Shyamji Varma, including the flamboyant Madan Lal Dhingra, who was hanged to death in England in 1909 for assassinating William Hutt Curzon Wyllie a British Indian army office. It also shows his interactions with Mahatma Gandhi, who is portrayed as a man who believes ahimsa (non violence) and tyaag (sacrifice) will bring India its independence, its Ram Rajya. Ram Rajya is possible only through Ravana’s death, said Savarkar. Saam, dhaam, dhand, bhed (request, bribe, punishment, rupture), is what Savarkar believed. As he says to Gandhi in the movie: “Main aise logon to khada karna chahta hoon jo zinda logon ka kaleja kha jayen (I want to create an army of people who can eat the enemy alive).” Anything to achieve independence.

But the showstopper of the movie is the time Savarkar spends at Cellular Jail in Port Blair, where not only is he shown being brutalised by Mirza Khan, but also the prison warden David Barry. Those who have seen Priyadarshan’s Malayalam movie Kaalapani (and have not read much about this period in history) will be familiar with this part of the story, although Hooda’s portrayal of starva­tion and living in filth is a step up from Annu Kapoor’s grim retread as Savarkar in the 1996 movie. Hooda’s make-up artist, Renuka Pillai, who worked on his many looks as Savarkar, says, “Those sequences were very difficult to shoot, because he was directing everyone, trying to keep the unit together, and starving, all at the same time. He was almost delirious.”

Hooda lost 30 kg for the role, over a period of time, which was made particularly difficult by the fact that the movie was not shot in a linear way.

Hooda doesn’t like easy, nor do things come easily his way. His 23-year-long career is studded with solid performances but also commer­cial disappointments. In an industry where superstars like Salman Khan can get away by not learning their lines and lesser stars refuse to stand in for scenes with other actors, he is an anomaly. He doesn’t believe in doing things by halves, even if a film is shot in difficult circumstances. As Ketan Mehta, who directed him in Rang Rasiya, based on Raja Ravi Varma, says: “Randeep is a wonderful actor. One of the best in his generation. Totally dedicated to his craft and committed to excellence. I had a great time working with him in Rang Rasiya. It was an extremely chal­lenging role based on the life of one of the most celebrated Indian artists, Raja Ravi Verma, over a long and turbulent life span, and he immersed himself in it.”

Rang Rasiya had its own issues, taking six years to release after its premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in 2008, as it was locked in a censorship battle with CBFC.

It’s a pattern that has repeated in Hooda’s career. After a much-loved debut in Monsoon Wedding, he had to wait four years to be cast in another film, D, direct­ed by Vishram Sawant. After a superb role as a charismatic Sikh gangster in Deepa Mehta’s Beeba Boys (2015), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, an international career seemed imminent, but it never kicked off. After spending three years growing his hair and beard and studying Sikhism for a film based on the Battle of Saragarhi, inspired by a standoff between 21 Sikh soldiers and 10,000 Afghans for over six hours in 1897, he had to abandon the film that was to be directed by Rajkumar Santoshi, because Akshay Kumar released Kesari in record time.

He poured all he had learned from that preparation and from playing Sarabjit Singh into his role as Gurnam Singh for CAT (2022), a Netflix mini-series. He had already studied Sikhism in depth for the Santoshi film and was able to portray the pure simplicity of a man who has been used as a pawn by the police against terrorists and drug-runners all his life. Hooda says, “Sikhs have always been portrayed as the butt of all jokes in Hindi movies. It was a conscious decision to play a non-caricaturish Sikh character. In my universe, Sikhs don’t flex their mus­cles, but fold their hands, being a more cultured, deeply spiritual and righteous people, unless you wrong them. And when you do wrong them, then their anger and cunning come into play.”

“We all wear many faces, with friends, family, lovers, with the public, and with ourselves, when we are all alone,” he says.

He’s no stranger to playing many parts and can summon all his acting tools, whether it is his physique, his face or his voice into his performances. It was a combination of all three that convinced director Milan Luthria that he would be perfect as the police officer cleaning up Mumbai in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai (2010). “It’s fair to say he was reluctant to do the film initially with two big stars Ajay Devgan and Emraan Hashmi, on board already. I pursued him and assured him that I would do justice to the character. He has a certain presence, physicality and voice that is important for a narrator. But I sensed a different approach to the character in the first couple of days of shooting. We talked about it, and as the shoot progressed his interactions with Ajay and Emraan became the high points. Off set as well, he is focused, brings a nice intensity to his work. Initially he pitched his per­formance at a much quieter level, but I wanted him to be more flamboyant. We talked about it and he finally went with my vision.”

Hooda’s attention to detail extends from the clothes to the hair of his char­acters. Utkarsh Naithani who co-wrote Savarkar with him, says Hooda made him run a marathon as a sprint, working crazy hours to complete the screen­play. He says when Hooda took over as director from Mahesh Manjrekar, he had already worked on the script for a year, but adds, “when we sat together on the new draft I realised this numero-uno actor was also a genuine screenwriter,” he says, adding, “Not that we didn’t have any fights.”

As for those who call it fiction, Naithani says: “I had to prove every single sequence to CBFC and only then did we get our censor certificate. We weren’t pro or anti anything. We just wanted to tell the story of Savarkar with conviction.” Adds Hooda, “I didn’t want to put him on a pedestal or make a staid biopic. He was a complicated person, I wanted to capture that.” Hooda had his share of celebri­tydom, being in the public eye much before he was truly famous, for being Sushmita Sen’s live-in boyfriend to more recently when he made news for marrying his Manipuri actor girlfriend, Lin Laishram, according to Metei tradi­tions. His sister Anjali Hooda, a doctor of internal medicine and now an actor (she plays Bhikaji Cama in Savarkar) says his family is proud of the man he has become. “I’ve seen him evolve from an easy-going young man. We’ve seen him through the struggle. He is dedicated to his craft, going from being an average actor to becoming so good now. As a per­son too he has become mature. We Jats are not great at handling other people, but I’ve seen the growth over time as an actor and also as a person. Also, marriage brings changes in personality.”

Now 47, Hooda has always had a contentious relationship with authority, living in boarding school most of his school life, first at Motilal Nehru School of Sports, Rai, and then Delhi Public School, RK Puram. He went on to do an undergraduate degree in marketing and then a postgraduate degree in business management from Melbourne, Australia. He returned to India, to am­ateur theatre, modelling and working with Naseeruddin Shah. But the cock­iness of youth has abated somewhat, there was a time when he would walk out of interviews, but he now understands the need to engage with the media and eventually the audience.

He remains a student of the profes­sion, an actor who finds much joy in his work, but also in life, whether it is wildlife photography or horse riding. The boy from Rohtak, now the big star from Mumbai, remains the child forever seeking the purity and passion of acting. As he has said often, “All actors are children who are forever performing.”

Bollywoodcinemafreedom struggleKaalapaniRandeep HoodaSarabjit SinghVinayak Damodar Savarkar