Vinay Pathak at Fame (South City) on Monday. Picture by Aranya Sen

Earlier in the week on Monday, Bheja Fry man Vinay Pathak came to Calcutta for a quick round of promotion for his forthcoming film Dasvidaniya at Fame (South City) en route to his hometown Dhanbad. Despite explaining to everyone what dasvidaniya means — it stands for ‘farewell’ in Russian — Vinay had to spell out the meaning to each and every member of the electronic media in the one-on-one interviews. t2 chose to ask a few other questions...

You must be really tired of answering the same question so many times...

The challenge is to do the same thing in many ways. While doing a film, you are needed to say the same lines for different camera angles. Why just that? Every second film is the same. That’s why Indian cinema has the dubious distinction of being called masala films. This is where it becomes challenging — how do you keep it fresh?.

In theatre you are doing just one play and you are doing it 25 days in a row. Now if you have to cry in a scene, on the opening night, you kill your mother. Oh god, mother died and tears come galore! By the seventh evening your heart will stop feeling bad even on your mother’s death. By the 10th day, you don’t even care. Then you start killing your other relatives — you kill your father, your grandfather. Who do I love the most? And then you realise all the people you love are gone (laughs)!

Jokes apart, I think it’s really challenging to do something different in every film. And the only way is to do different films and different characters. For me, even if you ask me the same questions, I will have to answer them. Because I grew up on The Telegraph in Dhanbad. I remember I used to cut the comic strips everyday and make my own comic book.

Like Bheja Fry’s Bharat Bhushan?

Exactly!

Vinay Pathak with Neha Dhupia in Dasvidaniya

The synopsis of Dasvidaniya — a common man leading a mundane life is suddenly told that he has three months to live — sounds too similar to Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru...

No, no! Over here we have kept the ordinariness of the guy. What happens when something like that happens to a guy staying in Powai in 2008 in India? In Ikiru when he learns he is about to die, he lives life to the fullest. That means enlargement of the display of emotions, of events. But in the realness what would happen?

Amar Kaul, my character in Dasvidaniya, does not want to go and meet the American president in those last three months. He is a very simple-hearted, ordinary and boring man. The challenges he puts himself into are very simple — to say “I love you” to the girl he always wanted to say but could never do so. And then how he does it. He does it keeping the integrity of who he is, without losing the ordinariness. It’s not Ikiru... It’s not Bucket List, as someone else said.

You are also credited as one of the producers of Dasvidaniya...

Yes! I have produced the film because I find it a very creative process. Understanding how you execute a thought which was penned by a writer and envisioned by a director. How do you support it? Say, there’s a choice between two locations — one is Rs 10,000 per shift and the other is Rs 5,000 per shift — you can go for the cheaper location and spend Rs 3,000 on dressing it up and making it better than the costlier one. That’s a creative call. The flat where Amar Kaul stays, does it have to be in Powai? Or do we shoot somewhere else? We went to Powai and the art director said it’s such a hep flat, not Amar Kaul’s flat at all. So we built a set in the flat, faking the walls, ageing them.

Is this is your first production?

Dasvidaniya is my first film production. My production house Lemontea Production has been doing television shows for the last four years. Ranvir, Vinay Aur Kaun? was our production.

The buzz is you are the busiest actor in Bollywood today...

I don’t know about that but there are a few films lined up. Dasvidaniya is releasing on November 7. Oh My God comes on November 21. Then there’s a film with Parvati Balagopalan called Straight. Then there’s a film called SRK with Ajay Verma opposite Rituparna Sengupta. In Mumbai Chaka Chak I play an antagonist, a proper bad guy... I am very excited about that. Then there’s a serious arthouse-kind film called Antardwand. Revathy directed Sonali Kulkarni and me in one of the nine films of Mumbai Cutting. I have a role in Adi Chopra’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Then there’s a film called Don’t Worry Be Happy and there’s Saurabh Shukla’s next film that I will start shooting for.

What would have happened to Vinay Pathak if Bheja Fry didn’t happen?

I would have still stuck to waiting for the exciting character. Before Bheja Fry had happened, Mixed Doubles had happened and I enjoyed working in the film. I can’t tell you how lovely that was. Mithya had also happened and that was great, too. After Jism, 17 similar roles were offered to me and I turned all of them down. I stopped doing feature films. I stuck to my guns from the very beginning. I did Fire, I did Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and I didn’t do anything for three years. Not because nobody was offering me anything, but nothing exciting was coming along. And I am not looking down upon mainstream cinema at all. I have to chew on something. Throw me a bone, I am a dog.