Subhabrata Das

Whenever Omi Vaidya walks down Mumbai’s streets these days, he’s hailed by strangers who can’t stop grinning at him. Omi who?, you say. Think Chatur Ramalingam in 3 Idiots and that might bring a smile to your face.

Yes, Vaidya’s the ‘fourth’ idiot with the funniest lines in Rajkumar Hirani’s blockbuster. As the nerdy student, he has the audience rolling in the aisles with gags like his ‘mutra vysarjan’ and ‘chamtkar-balatkar’ pieces in a strong South Indian accent.

Now, Vaidya is on a roll. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the film’s release and Vaidya’s days are packed giving interviews, attending functions, and meeting casting agents. The US- born-and-raised actor has even won two awards already.

“It’s very exciting. I never expected to be such a hit,” says Vaidya, who’s now trying to build a career in Bollywood.

Audiences loved Chatur, feels Vaidya, because “I was something different”. It helped too that like Chatur, he doesn’t speak Hindi — although his Marathi is fluent.

So how did the actor from Los Angeles land up in Bollywood? It began serendipitously when a scriptwriter friend, who’d worked with Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi, told him about the film. So Vaidya, a graduate from New York University’s film school, sent a demo reel.

He was in India when he got his first call to audition for one of the three idiots. “I don’t speak Hindi well so I didn’t think there was anything in Bollywood that I could seize upon,” says Vaidya. Nevertheless, he went to Hirani’s office. “About 30 seconds into it, the woman started correcting my Hindi, and a minute later, she said, ‘Thank you’,” recounts Vaidya.

Despite his “expectations of failure”, he got another call. “They said there’s this NRI role that we haven’t written yet but can you come,” he recalls. He did a speech from Munnabhai, giving it his “bindaas” best. That led to yet another audition, though it was another month before he got the final call from Hirani in March 2008.

As the nerdy Chatur Ramalingam in 3 Idiots, Vaidya has the audience in splits

“Raju said ‘You’ve done a good job but if you want the role, you’ve got to do three things’,” recounts Vaidya. He had to stop learning Hindi, stop watching Hindi films, and gain 12 pounds since he’d play the older, fatter America-returned Chatur in the first shooting schedule.

“When I first shot in August, people were sceptical,” says Vaidya. But he soon quelled their doubts. For Vaidya, the acting wasn’t tough, it was the weight.

After first gaining 12 pounds, he had to lose it all in six weeks. His nutritionist set a regime of eating small meals every two hours. “I think my full-time job was cooking. But the weight started coming off,” he says.

By December, he was ready to shoot the college scenes at IIM-Bangalore. That’s when he “really got to know my character and bonded with the three idiots as well”, he says.

Did Bollywood live up to its big bad image? Says Vaidya: “In America, things are very professional but they’re impersonal. Here, they kept saying ‘come hang out with us’. I really got to know them well.” And Hirani was “fabulous”. “Raju trusted me completely. And if anybody corrected my Hindi on set, he got fired,” says Vaidya.

What’s his favourite scene? The finale, he says, not just because he had to regain the weight. “That was just two months before my wedding and my wife was so mad. But it was magic,” he says.

Vaidya (first from left) at an event in Gandhinagar to promote the film

The response too has been surreal. Vaidya recalls standing unrecognised in a corner before the premiere’s screening. By interval, things had changed. “It took 30 minutes to get to the loo. So many people were coming up, amazed at what I’d done,” he says.

Vaidya’s journey has been equally amazing. He grew up in Palm Springs near Los Angeles. His father and brother are doctors. But his mother “inspired” him, pushing him into various activities. “At six, I started acting, dancing, skating… And I learnt that I just enjoyed entertaining people,” he says.

By nine, he was acting in the local Marathi Mandal. And at 14, he joined the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. “By then, I knew I enjoyed acting. I had the opportunity and my parents were very supportive,” he says.

That’s where he began making films too especially since as an Indian, “I’d never get the starring role”. The next stop was NYU film school — he graduated in film and television production in 2003, learning editing and direction.

His thesis short film, Out of Time, helped him to start as an editor back in LA. But he kept acting “on the side”, getting his first break in the television show Arrested Development. The big break came with The Office, where he did two episodes. “After that, everybody started looking at me,” says Vaidya.

More roles — and ads — followed. But they were the stereotypical nerdy Indian roles. “I was getting frustrated. But then 3 Idiots happened,” he says.

Now, in Bollywood, there’s “a lot of pressure to play the next Chatur”. But Vaidya, who’s learning Hindi, is resisting it.

“Everybody loves Chatur. But I have to go past Chatur to see where I can fit in. I want to show people who Omi is,” he says. And Omi, he states 3 Idiots-style, “chases excellence not success”.

What if he doesn’t get the “challenging roles” he wants? “I’ll find my path,” states Vaidya confidently. Till then, the audience is happy discovering Chatur Ramalingam.