(Left to right) Actors Hanif Hum Ghum, Linda Arsenio, John Abraham and Arshad Warsi at a news conference in Mumbai to promote Kabul Express. (AFP)

Mumbai, Dec. 12: Eight Kalashnikovs bought him freedom from the Taliban, but the prison ordeal failed to dent his acting zeal that eventually put him on board Kabul Express.

“I was arrested in 1998, when a handful of Taliban men entered (my) home one afternoon and found some tapes. On the basis of these video cassettes, they arrested me. I was beaten with a live wire for seven days and given one roti every morning. Then they wrote down the crimes that they were accusing me of. That was the end of my life, I thought,” said Hanif Hum Ghum, arguably the biggest attraction in the John Abraham-Arshad Warsi starrer.

Clad in blue jeans, a yellow T-shirt and a stylish cap, Ghum made quite a picture among his star colleagues who hogged the limelight at a news conference here today. Soft-spoken and polite, he related his experiences in chaste Urdu.

His family goaded him to give up acting and join the army or even be a doctor, but the 43-year-old was convinced about his true calling. “Acting is in my blood.”

Ghum managed to sneak out of prison in six months, and resumed his career. “I sold my house and with that money I bought eight Kalashnikovs and gifted them to the Taliban guards. That’s how I bought my freedom,” says Ghum, who has kept a diary of the atrocities he faced in captivity.

Life wasn’t easy. Ghum had to move to Iran, but in four years, he established himself as an actor of repute. Now, back home, he dreams of the day when a film starring him will be screened in one of Afghanistan’s 11 theatres.

Around 20 movies, most of them action-based, are made in Afghanistan every year, but budgets are low — Rs 10-12 lakh — and the films have no market outside the country, says Ghum. Actors, too, come cheap, he adds.

“We don’t make romances. There are no women artistes in Afghanistan and, frankly speaking, people have grown up with a war raging in their own backyard. So, that’s what (war) they prefer. In fact, before Taliban, we had a number of women in business, but the present generation is wary and scared,” he said.