‘I do not like attending weddings and dancing at marriages…I get very upset when others do it’

• Does that work in cinema, can you afford to be shy?

I have no clue. Maybe, people tell me that it doesn’t work. But I think I would want to be the way I am. There are things which you don’t want to change about yourself, whatever it may cost.

• Is there any particular reason why you never speak out to the media, particularly on TV? In print also, you are rarely seen talking about your movies when they are about to be released or during a shoot.

Yes, even that also, I am forced to do by my producers. But nothing against the media. I prefer keeping things not out in the open, about my personal life. And I don’t talk much, so people, I think take, it for arrogance also.

• So you walk your talk in cinema, as an actor and a producer.

I think you do your job and if it’s done fine, it speaks for itself. So you don’t need to talk a lot. The same media people used to tell me a couple of years ago that it’s is a drawback that you don’t talk about yourself or hype yourself. Then the same people came and told me it works, when a few films were appreciated.

• It makes you an original.

More than original, I am myself. It’s very important as in this industry every morning you get up and you are playing a character. If you carry that home, mentally you get warped. I’ve heard about and seen a few senior actors also, who are not themselves anymore. And they are not to be blamed. They have been playing this character, the star and they have people around them who constantly keep reminding them who they are.

• So when they go home, they want their dog to applaud them.

Exactly. And then you lose your own identity, your own personality, what you were born with.

• Are you talking of some contemporary stars who has become obsessed like this or old ones?

Old ones also and some contemporary also.

• Who cannot get over their filmi persona?

Not even that, I just don’t find them very real. Some of them, not all of them obviously. But I get the feeling that they are not the way they are behaving. So, I get really scared sometimes.

• Would you name who?

No, I don’t want to name anybody.

• But why does this scare you?

Because I want to be what I am. And secondly, I think everything is shortlived. Success, failure, if it starts affecting you, it affects everything in your life. And the bottomline is… I have tried to manage that if there’s been success, I’ve not got carried away. If there’s been failure, you do get upset, but I just snap out of it.

• Are you philosophical? How do you handle failure?

I don’t think much about it. Once a film is over, forget its release, it’s over for me. It’s on a day-to-day basis also. After a shot, there are a lot of actors who would go back to the monitor to see what they’ve done…and apart from that, keep thinking about what they’ve done. I don’t.

• Or brooding?

Not even brooding, a little bit unsure…‘I could have done this better’. You have to better yourself everytime and there is no limit to it. So, I stop thinking and tell my co-stars, especially the ones I get along well with, or ones who are new, not to think about it.

• I am fascinated by what you said about stars becoming self-obsessed. Don’t name anyone but give me some examples where you noted something like this and said to yourself, ‘Good heavens! people can’t change like this!”

I can’t give you an example, but the way they speak or start thinking, they close themselves completely. I am not very sure about this as I have not seen it myself but I had heard about a very senior actor from the south, a very big star. I was told by somebody close to him that when he was around 70, he used to sit at home and act the way he used to earlier… He was telling me how this person got so obsessed and got mentally a little…

• Deranged, unbalanced…

Yes. And I feel that could happen to me if I don’t snap out of it.

• Stardom is one of the most unbalancing things in life.

I agree

• So what keeps you anchored, besides your own personality.

I guess, the people around me.

• In Hindi cinema, people around you are usually chamchas, fans.

Yes. And that’s the reason if you ask people who work with me…neither do I have any chamchas or people who I would want to keep appreciating me. I don’t make a lot of friends. Not because people are not nice but because I am an introvert.

• These are friends from the world of movies, or friends from college…

Some are from the world of movies and some are from college, childhood.

• Who are your friends from the world of cinema, because those are the ones we are most likely to know about.

I don’t have a problem with anybody in the world of cinema.

• But who are your friends?

I don’t hang out with a lot of people. I hardly party. But if I confide, there are very few people… there’s Abhishek, Sanju, Suniel Shetty. We might speak to one another once a week or so, but we know we are there for each other.

• One thing people would like know more about is that you and Kajol are completely different personalities, at least outwardly.

Outwardly, yes. We are different. She is an extrovert, I am an introvert. She talks a lot while I am more on the quieter side. But when it boils down to the basic values, we both think alike. We both believe in the same things and same goals. That’s what I think is more important. Outwardly, if we are not similar, it’s good because one needs to talk and the other needs to keep quiet.

• In this case, we know who talks and who keeps quiet. Is it like this at home also?

Yes. It is.

• And you are a good listener?

I am a good listener but if I am not listening also, I pretend that I am listening.

• So let me ask you a question. It’s a question I asked Jaya Bachchan once. At home, who wears the pants? It’s a sexist expression, but that means who decides, who’s the boss?

Well. It depends on different issues. If I think I am right in making a decision, I do. Where I think she is right, she would.

• What are the kind of things you disagree on? I know you both agree on George Bush not doing the right thing in Iraq?

She is not much into the outside world at all. We disagree on that. I keep telling her, ‘Why don’t you read the newspaper? Why don’t you know what’s happening outside?’ But she is not interested. So I don’t think she knows what George Bush did in Iraq.

• Maybe, she should start reading, tell her to read The Indian Express.

OK.

• Are you very much into the outside world?

I like reading my newspapers, watching the news, I like to know what’s happening in the world. Not that I am obsessed.

• What is it that exercises your mind when you read about what’s going on in the world?

You do tend to think that what is happening, is it right or wrong. Though you don’t have any experience to decide whether it’s actually right.

• In the last few years, what is it that happened in the country or internationally that has affected you, made you think?

Not that it has really made me think because it doesn’t really make a difference.

• Does corruption bother you?

Corruption really bothers me.

• Do communal riots bother you?

Communal riots bother me. Little, stupid things bother me.

• Like what?

Lots of things. I really don’t understand politics.

• Good for you.

Yes, it’s good for me. But it’s not good for the country because most of the people are like me who don’t understand politics. And I think it’s somehow our fault. Because if we don’t understand, we don’t make decisions, we don’t vote for the right people. We are suffering, nobody can be blamed.

• Does that mean some day we’ll see you getting more interested in politics, public life?

I don’t think so. A person like me will not be able to do it, even if I make an effort.

• Because from the very beginning, you have been compared with Sunil Dutt a little bit, who ended up in public life, and quite happily.

When we were compared—it’s a compliment though—it was just the looks…

• There was a certain intensity, a certain aloofness.

Yes, but personality we don’t know.

• So what else works on your mind besides a film? When you go to bed, what do you think of?

I try to switch off, but you do think of a lot of things. I was a very short-tempered person, but not any more.

• Have you done silly things out of anger?

Yes, I have, everybody has.

• Like what?

Beaten up people, went behind the bars during college days. But that I think is with everybody. Then, I started thinking, for the last couple of years, from the other person’s point of view…that cools my temper down.

• Now take us back a little bit. Tell us about you and Kajol. When did you first meet, how did it start?

We first met on the sets of our first film together, Hulchul. How it started, I don’t know. It just happened. There’s no particular day or instance. We just grew into a relationship, slowly grew into liking each other as friends, got friendly, unknowingly… We kept coming across each other a couple of times and then we started liking each other. Just as friends, as human beings. Slowly we got friendly and are married today.

• But you were like chalk and cheese? Was it a case of opposites attracting?

Maybe. Also because as I told you, that the values are the same. The bottomline was we thought similar.

• But you know the world of cinema is different. You are so much in public eye. Here’s one case when an MMS becomes an object of so many denials and controversies. You are under the microscope all the time. When the two of you are so different, does it cause pressure?

No. I think if you trust each other and you know each other… Luckily, she’s also been part of this industry…so you know the media also.

• There have been rumours about you and there have rumours about her.

There haven’t been many rumours about her. More rumours about me. But luckily, again, she trusted me. Secondly, some of the rumours that got printed were totally baseless… At times, it could be so stupid. Once I read something about myself and an actress called Mamta Kulkarni years ago. And trust me, till today, I’ve never met her in my life. Or even came across her also, at a party. I’ve never seen her apart from her film promos or so. I have never seen her in my life. And this Kajol knew.

• So these rumours never had any credibility?

Yes. Even earlier, if I had something to do with somebody, before marriage, I am very thankful to the media that they have always printed the wrong name. So, they could never find out if I ever had something to do with somebody. And they would always write about the wrong person…

• How do you handle Kajol’s extrovertedness…she has a gang of her own.

I have my friends, she has hers.

• Hindi cinema has gangs and she is very much part of the most prominent of all gangs in the Hindi film industry—the Shahrukh Khan, Karan Johar gang. Does that bother, affect you?

Not at all… She was friendly with them before we met.

• Does it amuse you?

Not amuse me. Friendship never amuses me.

• But there is a certain kind of buddiness, at least.

See, I’ve never got into the details of their friendship and we don’t discuss it also.

• And you don’t particularly see that you also bond with people she bonds with and vice versa?

No, I don’t have to and neither has she ever forced me. She knows me… that I wouldn’t like to bond with people I don’t want to. As I told you, I am an introvert and I like to maintain my own distance.

• Of all your roles, my favourite is the one in Company. Is is one of your favourite ones, too?

When I was playing the character, I didn’t know what I was doing because we were doing very less. Ramu used to ask me, ‘Aren’t you insecure because any actor in your place would be insecure in such a role?’ If you see the film, in most of the scenes, I am quiet and there’s just one close-up at the end. But Ramu and I believed in each other. For Company, I give Ramu more credit.

• But tell me, the signature of the role you played there was a cigarette. Could anyone have done that role without smoking?

Could have. But there are a lot of things which can be done differently. There are 10,000 ways to do things. But what you think works for the character and for you, you should go ahead with it.

• I am talking of the smoking ban.

I don’t think there should be any ban on smoking. We are not trying to promote smoking, we are not saying that smoking is very good for health. Most of the time, negative characters smoke.

• Bad guys smoke…. bad women smoke

Yes. Most of the time, we also show that smoking is not good for health. If somebody is smoking, the other person is trying to stop him, if it’s a love story… And usually, a person quits in the end. What we are trying to show in our films is what is happening in society. Because we are from this society.

• So banning it is a silly idea?

It’s a stupid idea, not just a silly idea. It does not make sense at all.

• Is it workable?

I don’t know but tomorrow you’ll ban rape, murder and everything. Can you ban politicians, what all do you want to ban. There has to be some kind of freedom.

• Do you see the film community protesting, being able to stop them?

They are trying to protest individually, in their own way. But one thing I don’t like about the film industry is that there is no unity. And that is why I don’t like these couple of shows also, because all you do is…just for your TRP and entertainment, you go on an XYZ show and you try to malign other people from the industry, and bitch about other people. You are part of the industry and if you are united, no one can make fun of you. Tomorrow, people are going to look down upon you…I do not like attending weddings and going dancing on marriages and things like that. And I get very upset when others do it because they look at me also in the same light.

• For money?

For money, exactly. And I don’t think there is any crunch of money.

• But top stars are doing it.

That’s exactly what I am saying. I could understand if other people were doing it who really needed money…. It’s my opinion, but I think it’s wrong.

• Ajay, politics or no politics, I think you have a role in uniting the film industry for the right cause?

I think everybody should. Like in the south, they’ve come together and piracy is practically not there. If we all come together, at least we can start somewhere.

• Or keeping the underworld out of cinema?

For any reason. If we are united, people will think twice before attacking us. Even the government is doing nothing much to help the industry. Just imposing bans. I don’t understand this.

• Ajay, you are a soft-spoken guy but you are not somebody who doesn’t speak his mind?

No, I like to speak my mind. That’s why I speak less.