Reason Enough

In Sharman Joshi’s world, there is a reason attached to everything

For Sharman Joshi, carrying a film entirely on his shoulders is not reason enough to pick it. “It’s the script that has to give me reason enough to sign on.” And like all character actors, Joshi, who stands in the line of multi-starrers, opted for a spicy rack of variety. A ‘reason enough to keep him challenged,’ Joshi talks about his next adventure, Onir’s Sorry Bhai. A rather bold and unusual film, he gives his reason for the selection along with a brief introduction to the plotline, ‘something’s that never been attempted before.’ We get to hear that quite often these days, anyways, back to Sorry Bhai, and it’s about brother falling for his elder bro’s fiancee. “No, there’s no melodrama here, that’s the best part…it’s light hearted, the emotions have been handled very finely. I would say, at times, it’s surreal and then dramatic enough to capture the effect,” Sharman speaks in his usual controlled, ten words per sentence manner. For an actor who is a riot on screen, believe me, it’s not easy getting him to talk off it. “I take a lot of time to warm up and get in a talkative mode,” he excuses himself and returns to the subject, which in this case questions the boundaries of love, life and relationships. Are we allowed to cross them? “You mean fall for your brother’s fiancee? Nothing can be done when the heart rules. The mind keeps signaling ‘not right’, but the heart suits itself, emotions run amock and love overtakes it all. When it comes to Sorry Bhai, we are not saying that these are the set of moralities you are supposed to follow. It’s simply a character play, all you need to do is go and watch it. If you can relate to it, if it holds your attention, then it has served the purpose of good cinema.”

The core reason of cinema, says Sharman, is entertainment. “Punch in a message and it’s a great combo, but mind you, not every film has the premise or space for it. So, even if the inspiration in the guise of entertainment is momentary, I’d say it’s worth it,” says the actor. In Sorry Bhai, it’s being offered with a dash of humour. “Bold themes with humour are easier to swallow, for change often attracts resistance,” Sharman cites another one of his raison d’etre.

Although he has his platterful with three quite interesting releases, we missed his quirky self in Golmaal Returns. “Date problems, but if there is a sequel to the sequel, I’d gladly take on,” Sharman’s now looking forward to Three Idiots based on Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, Toh Baat Pakki starring Tabu, Vatsal Seth and Yuvika Chaudhry and Allah Ke Bande, a human drama starring Naseeruddin Shah, Anjana Sukhani, Atul Agnihotri and the director himself, Farukh Kabir. “Three Idiots is an entertainer, Toh is about a simple engineering student pushed against the wall and how he sets everything right while Allah is about these two guys from the slums, serious stuff…again the choices are purely script based, and I don’t go looking for them, they just come to me,” Sharman takes one thing at a time. Just like the song he sings, que sera sera, whatever will be,

will be…