Is He the Next Tom Alter?

Aussie restaurateur,now visiting IFFI,debuts in Marathi film on Veer Savarkar.

He claims to have fed Thai curry to the whole of Sydney. A love for the country he had left in his twenties has brought him back to India,armed with a smattering of dehati Hindi he had picked up in Bihar and Bollywood dreams. Two years later,as Charles Thomson awaits the release of his first Marathi film,titled 1909,based on the life of RSS ideologue Veer Savarkar,hes clearly realising his lifes ambition and gunning for more.

Lekin main toh yahan Marathi film karne nahin aya tha. Mujhe to Bollywood jaana hai. Tom Alter buddhe ho gayen hain,(I came here to enter Bollywood,not do Marathi films. Tom Alter has grown old),the slot of the firang in Hindi films is open. People abroad say I look like Mr Bean but in India,they say I look like Rajiv Gandhi. There is no dearth of characters I can fit into. Mera film is saal IFFI mein nahi hai,agle saal ayega (my film is not in IFFI this year but it will be next year), he says. At the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa to network for Bollywood projects,Thomson,56,is positive about getting work.

Clad in a white kurta pyjama and sprinting between the multiple festival venues,Thomson looks like just any other foreign delegate. Till he greets you in the rustic Hindi he is clearly proud of,making it a point to mention that it is dehati because he picked it up in rural Bihar. He came to India as an 11-year-old Australian boy with his mother,who taught at a yoga school,and imbibed not just the language but a love for Bollywood.

After more than a decade in India,the family returned Down Under and Thomson started a successful restaurant business there. But I carried India in my heart he has turned vegetarian but adds apologetically,I know India is not vegetarian any more. Now in India,he lives in Gurgaon and works with Eco India Financial Services,a firm that provides banking services to the poor.

In Australia,Thomson continued to speak Hindi by seeking out Indian company. Once,he met a former swimming champion from India who was working as a lifeguard in a Sydney pool. The man,a Marathi,shared his story of how his Sydney-based family was pushing him into technical education while his heart lay in acting.

Today,that former swimming champion is better known as Marathi television star Shashank Ketkar. Director Abhay Kambli was looking for a foreigner,who could manage a bit of Marathi. Shashank suggested my name without asking me, says Thomson,about his role as District Magistrate Jackson in 1909.

He surfs through pictures on his smartphone until he finds one of himself as Jackson donning a black wig and moustache. I sent this one to my father and he said dont come back unless you shave. But my father is

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actually happy, he says. Thomson has also appeared in an episode

of Marathi serial Honar Sun Mi Hay Gharchi.

Ketkar,one of the main actors in the serial,recounts his surprise at meeting a Hindi-speaking Aussie at the Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre in Sydney. We became friends and then I came to India to pursue my passion for acting. Charles,too,moved here. I,too,had auditioned for 1909 but it did not work out,but Charles landed a role, says Ketkar,whose show is notching up consistently high TRPs.

Thomson has met a few directors at the IFFI Film Bazar and is in talks about other projects including in Hindi and another in Telugu.

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