Rajat Kapoor is damn moody”. Well, when that is the cautionary tale, you better tread carefully. We would be meeting him after a long, humid day of shoot in Salt Lake for the short film, How About A Kiss? “a story of love” between a professor and  a student. Kapoor: the dapper professor. Ritabhari Chakraborty: the student. Ritabhari has penned the script, too, and it is being directed by her mother Satarupa Sanyal. Kapoor looked tired but then his eyes came alive at the sight of boxes of sweets. 

We didn’t know you have a sweet tooth...

(Laughs out loud) Yes, I do. I love Indian sweets and Bengali sweets is right at the top. We had mango ras malai, sandesh and we had baked rasgullas before that. It was a real feast, man!

You must be having real sweet memories of Calcutta too?

Yes! I have come here maybe 50 times! And I love the city a lot… one of the most vibrant cities in the country… in the world. We are coming back on September 15 with Macbeth and Hamlet.

How has the shoot gone so far? 

We (Ritabhari and him) met for the first time on the sets of Pari and she then sent me the script, which I liked. So, here I am! 

Did you the ever have a crush on any of your professors?

When I was in school… yes. Oh my god... my biology teacher! And then one of our English teachers…. 

Your Twitter bio says: ‘film-maker, actor, theatre director, writer... hmmm what else? husband, father..’. What else did you want to be?

Nothing! Terribly happy and grateful for what I have been allowed to do, in a way. I think there are 0.01 per cent people in the world who are actually doing what they are passionate about. And to be able to do that and get the love of your audience… I think it is just incredible. 

How have you managed to strike a quality balance between films and theatre?

I get offers, but they don’t make good films by and large. 

Are you doing films to sustain your passion for theatre?

This is a myth that theatre is somehow a higher art… an art for a more dedicated artist. Rubbish. And my job is a director’s. I act once in a while, but my real job is to make films and I am crazy about films. It’s just that I don’t act very much because they don’t write good scripts any more. I have made choices and I have made them vigorously. And I want to keep it like that. 

Has it been bullseye all the time?

It still is a leap of faith. It can be a great script, but the film can be trash. I have worked with a lot of first-time directors… Mantra (Nicholas Kharkongor) or Hulla (Jaideep Varma) or Bheja Fry (Sagar Ballary) or 10ml LOVE (Sharat Katariya) or Siddharth: The Prisoner (Pryas Gupta), Dil Chahta Hai (Farhan Akhtar). You don’t really know what that first-time director would be. 

How is your crowd-funding initiative for RK/R Kay coming about?

Slow but steady. I am very happy with the response. We are very far from the money that we need, about Rs 2 crore.... It is about a filmmaker that I am playing. He is making a film and he is having a tough time making it! 

That’s you! 

No! It’s not me. It’s RK! 

When you are directing, you are completely in control. What are you looking for as an actor?

Complete lack of control. Submissive and complete surrender. There is a joy also. Why should I meddle into somebody else’s vision? Why should I take that stress? I am acting, I am free. 

So, no I-know-better-than-you attitude...

No. That’s an actor’s job to not think. If that is the attitude, that is the worst attitude. A lot of actors have that.  

You recently tweeted about desire. What is your desire right now?

My desire continues to be the next film. I have just finished shooting Kadak. We are now doing the sound and it will be ready in two months… it is a dark comedy. After Ankhon Dekhi, it took me five years to make Kadak. Those five years are not very pleasant. It’s kind of depressing, hard and heartbreaking. 

Recent reads you loved: 

The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga). Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami), which I really loved.