In last month’s sleeper success Neerja, Jim Sarbh plays Khalil, the most volatile among the terrorists who hijacked the ill-fated Pan Am flight in Karachi. 

The 28-year-old has wowed both critics and audiences with his Bolly debut. “I am getting tweets comparing me to Heath Ledger’s Joker and Gabbar! People are being sweet but I know they are just exaggerating,” he says.

After studying psychology from Emory University in Atlanta, Jim moved back to the city of his birth to be an actor. In the last four years, the Parsi lad has built quite a theatre repertoire — acting in Sunil Shanbag’s Stories in a Song and Alyque Padamsee’s version of Death of a Salesman, and directing his version of Mike Bartlett’s Cock. Weeks after the release of Neerja, Jim is still to get used to being the talk of the town.  

How is it going?
Errrm... it’s been kind of non-stop. I flew in for the preview of Neerja and then flew back to Ranchi to shoot for Konkona’s (Sensharma) film (A Death in the Gunj). I was shooting nights. And then I came back to do shows of The Living Room (a play directed by Kalki Koechlin). And there have been interviews in between. I haven’t had the time to really understand what is going on. It’s like being in the middle of a whirlwind! (Laughs)

You are living the life of a movie star and you might as well get used to it!
(Laughs) I guess. It’s like I am being hit by all these amazing things, but I haven’t been able to process anything. I am just going from high to high. 

Were you nervous before your Bolly debut?
It’s hard to explain but about a month before the release, I left for Ranchi to shoot for Konkona and some shows of my plays. Before I left, people started telling me that I should get myself a publicist and agents to prepare for the release of Neerja. I started feeling like something big was coming my way… I started to feel heavy. I don’t know if it was anxiety or excitement. I just wanted Neerja’s release to be over and done with and the feeling kept getting bigger as the release kept getting closer. 

What kind of reactions have you been getting for being Khalil?
Compliments from people who I respect a lot like Anurag (Kashyap), Kalki, Irrfan (Khan), Nikhil Advani and Radhika Apte have meant a lot to me. On Twitter, people have said things like ‘Please hijack our plane, hottie!’

What?!
Ya, ya! (Laughs) People are calling me a cute terrorist and saying I have stolen their hearts. It’s nice to get compliments from both girls and guys. If only girls were sending compliments, then I could have thought it was just a cute performance, but the boys seemed to have liked it as well.

You got an interesting reaction from Neerja’s brother Akhil... 
He posted on my Facebook wall that every time I went close to Neerja (Sonam Kapoor), he wanted to kill me! That made me feel so many complicated emotions. Suddenly, it went from just a character in a film to something that is a real incident in someone’s life. Everything that must have been in his mind about the hijack was brought to life. It must have been a weird experience for him to watch the film.  

I believe you were anxious about playing a terrorist. Was it because you thought you might get typecast?
Not at all. I have done enough variety of roles and I plan to continue doing... so I wasn’t worried about getting typecast. What I was feeling anxious about was that in world politics, Islam is the scapegoat for all acts of terrorism. There is serious Islamophobia in the world. I didn’t want to add to it. It was like kicking a dog that was already struggling. A handful of fanatics are giving the religion a bad reputation. 

Did you really hit Sonam Kapoor during filming?
Ya, man. Please don’t make this the headline! (Laughs) I hit her accidentally with the gun and she got a big bruise on her cheek. We ended up keeping the scene because it looked so real. I also ended up slapping some of the passengers really hard. The problem was that they weren’t proper actors so after a point they stopped reacting to the gun. Their fear wasn’t real. When I am pointing the gun at you, you have to be really, really afraid. 

You are a psychology graduate... where did the interest in acting come from?
I don’t know. This was the only thing I wanted to do. My father was the captain of a cargo ship. When I was about two years old, we used to sail with him. The crew of his ship would dress me up in fancy dress and make me dance for them. I was a performing monkey! (Laughs) We moved to Australia and I remember being on stage and singing Dig Dig Dig Like A Wombat in school. Even when we moved back to India, I continued being on stage. I acted all through school and college. I love movies! 

So why did you give up acting?
Ya! I thought I was more interested in discovering more about myself than acting. So I went off to an ashram in the Himalayas and I was walking around. It was nice. And then I thought I would regret not making films... so I came back!

Karishma Upadhyay