Gulshan Grover at INOX (Forum) on Thursday. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray

The festival-hopping and award-collecting I Am Kalam had a screening last Thursday at INOX (Forum). The film, directed by Nila Madhab Panda and presented by Smile Foundation and Centuryply, has also won the National Award for the young boy who plays Kalam, Harsh Mayar. Thanks to Gulshan Grover’s presence in the film — he plays the dhaba owner in Rajasthan where Kalam works — Prince Charles has requested a special screening of the film at Buckingham Palace. t2 caught up with Grover before the screening.

The film’s been such a rage at festivals abroad but very few people know about it in India. Why?

It’s an unusual film to begin with. Smile Foundation, which has no experience in moviemaking, has produced the film. The director is a first-timer. The entire cast, barring me, is unknown. So, a film like I Am Kalam needed a certain kind of platform before it was introduced to the Indian public. The film was taken to various festivals across the world, in the US, in Germany, in England, where it won very interesting awards. Why I say interesting is because I Am Kalam won a viewer’s choice award in Europe where most of the viewers were kids. Now, how does a European kid identify with this Indian kid who works at a dhaba for his living? When I went to the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, it again won the viewer’s choice award. That’s the magic of the film. It’s entertaining and has a message which is universal.

Is it again Indian poverty that is being used to woo the West?

No, I don’t think so because this particular film is not preachy. It’s not like, oh god, how we are suffering here in India. Not at all. It’s simple and entertaining. Yes, the theme of child labour and a child’s right to education maybe dark and grim but it’s treated very glamorously. It’s set in Rajasthan and the vivid colours and locations make it a rich movie-going experience.

But there’s hardly any buzz about the film which releases on August 5?

See, the Indian film viewers’ sensibility is different. They appreciate art films but don’t go and spend money on them. They want entertainment. So, I Am Kalam needs to be projected as the entertaining film it is. I don’t even like the poster which says everybody has a Kalam in him. Sab bhool gaye hain. (Everyone’s forgotten A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the former Indian president, who inspires the young boy in the film to study.) If it says everybody has a Shah Rukh in him, people will come. Once the word spreads, then the film will take over. So positioning the film as an award-winning project is fine but it should also be marketed as an entertainer.

Personally, how satisfactory was your performance?

I don’t know whether it’s one of my best but definitely one my most important performances. This is the first film where I didn’t get angry when they cut four-five of my scenes. Usually I get very mad and I speak to the director very rudely. But when I saw the final cut and realised that my scenes have been taken away, I felt okay because they have achieved a beautiful flow.

Gulshan Grover and Harsh Mayar in I Am Kalam

You have done so many hardcore masala films in Bollywood. When you sign a film like I Am Kalam, is your approach different?

Completely! I am a trained, qualified actor. My batchmates at the acting school were Anil Kapoor and Mazhar Khan. I was also an acting teacher for seven years... Kumar Gaurav, Tina Munim were all my students. What I have learnt in all these years is that you have to be sincere to your role. Whether you are playing a baddie in a commercial film or playing an offbeat character in an art film, you have to believe in the character like a child. When you do a film like I Am Kalam, your approach has to be very pure.

Why don’t we see you these days in big Bolly movies?

The reason is very simple. I created this huge brand of villainy, you know... the ‘bad man’. It was consciously created. It worked brilliantly, it gave me stardom, a separate identity. And then I moved away as the bad guy roles were getting cliched and written the same way. I wanted to take my craft to the next level and when I went abroad I became the first commercial actor to do so outside India. I didn’t leave Mumbai or I didn’t stop working in Bollywood to try my luck in Hollywood. I went there, did my role and came back. What happened as a result was that a lot of the rubbish films here disappeared. But also a lot of good projects stopped coming to me, because they thought I had shifted and wasn’t interested in Bollywood any more. And then suddenly, the villain disappeared from the Hindi movies. The bad guy roles started going to reject heroes, heroes whose careers are not going anywhere. With me the speciality villain came to an end. Now, filmmakers only come to me with challenging roles and not just villainous roles. Like the role in I Am Kalam.

What’s the update on your Salma Hayek film The Driver?

It’s getting pushed back to the end of the year. As you know, she is having a lot of personal problems (Salma’s husband Francois-Henri Pinault is in the firing line for having fathered a love child with supermodel Linda Evangelista). Also, the film was having some writing issues. The director, Bill Duke, was not happy with the (script) drafts that were being written.