BILLBOARD
MAKING WAVES
SHORT TAKES
SOUTHERN SPICE
ROUGH CUTS
MEMORIES
ARCHIVES
MOVIES CHAT

When ruling stars meet

Anant Nag. Click for bigger pic!

M D Riti

Nodappa (look here), you had better concentrate on your boxing and not your love life," Bangalore City Development Minister Anant Nag said. He was addressing Kannada superstar Shivaraj Kumar. "Remove that emotion called preethi (love) from your mind right now." A subdued Shivaraj Kumar, clad in an olive-green T-shirt and jeans, nodded acquiescence.

"Cut," yelled director Sivamani. Scene six, take five of the Kannada movie Vishwa, a remake of Ghayal, produced by Dhanraj, was just over.

As soon as the floodlights were switched off, Nag's cell phone trilled, as if on cue. It was his secretary from the Vidhana Soudha. "This is the tenth call I have received over the past three hours," said the actor wryly. "When you are acting in a film, your continuous physical presence on location is a must. But you can function as a minister even by remote control for a few hours at a time."

The next call is from his Punjabi wife Gayatri, a leading heroine of the Kannada screen who he met and married her a dozen years ago, and is now a happy homemaker and mother of their only child, Aditi.

"She is just reminding me to stay on the sets and complete my shooting schedule for the day," chuckles Nag. "She was a very disciplined actress herself, you see. Now she is worried that I will run off to Vidhana Soudha and leave my producer high and dry."

When Nag was elected to the state assembly on a Dal ticket almost five years ago, he continued to be a film actor. However, when he was made a minister in the J H Patel ministry over two years ago, he finally stopped acting. "I was new to the work of being minister, and realised that I must devote all my time to it," says the man, who was already ageing gracefully but still holding on to his particular slot as a hero of the middle class audiences.

"Now I have understood my portfolio very well and can do my work very fast. I have established contacts at a grassroots level with all the officers, field workers and others working with me. Before I became an actor, I was a bank officer in Bombay for five years, so I had no experience of politics of this kind."

Shivraj Kumar. Click for bigger pic!

Nag is staging a comeback in a second hero's role now in Vishwa, where he plays Shivaraj's noble but troubled elder brother. Is his decision to star in a remake a gesture of support for the Karnataka government's recently announced policy to support remakes by giving them a 100 per cent tax exemption?

"Not really," he confesses, shifting to a corner chair of the dining table where the afternoon's scenes are being shot. As light boys and sound engineers fuss around the room setting up the next shot, Nag leans forward in his upright wooden chair and continues, "I turned this role down when it was first offered to me because it was a remake. But then, Shivaraj called me up and told me that he was eager for an opportunity to act with me. I have never been in a movie with him before, though I have acted with his father Rajkumar in two films (Kamana Billu and Bhakta Prahalada.) His invitation tempted me."

Adds Shivaraj, "I am really glad that I have this opportunity to act with a man whose screen presence I've always admired."

After playing the hero for more than a decade, shouldn't he have chosen a film where he played the male lead for his re-entry?

"No, it was just that I was quite nervous about getting back after two years, and wanted a smaller role like this one," he admitted. "This movie was ideal as it called for a small time commitment of a week's shooting, no more, and had a secondary role, but opposite an excellent actress like Suhasini, with whom I have acted a decade ago (in Hosa Neeru.)

"Anyway, about 20 per cent of the 125 films I have acted in so far were remakes. But I will avoid them for a while after this. My colleague, Information Minister M C Nanaiah also now agrees with me that we should rethink the film policy and not treat remakes on par with original movies."

Click for bigger pic!

Unlike the more restless Shivaraj, who got up and moved off as soon as his shot was over, enthusiastically greeting a unit hand and walking out of the room with his arm around him, Nag, as usual, was quite at ease sitting quietly in the ongoing bustle. One was reminded of the days when he used to sit by himself in a large armchair reading Time or Newsweek during the shooting of the television series Malgudi Days, directed by his brother Shankar Nag a decade ago.

Suhasini walks into the room with a swish of her orange silk saree. The room comes alive to the familiar peals of her laughter as she jokes with unit hands and rehearses her lines. "Its such a pleasure to be working with Anant again," she says, with a dazzling smile.

"I was very jittery when I faced the camera after such a long break now," continues Nag. "But I have enjoyed having the freedom to say no to certain roles now, that I never had when I was full time actor. After I became minister, I acted in one film (Ganesha, I Love You) that we had already finalised before I was selected for the ministry.

"Last year, I played the role of Tipu Sultan in a television serial directed by Girish Karnad. In this film, I am a businessman who borrows money from the wrong people, gets embroiled in all kinds of rackets and is finally killed when he tries to get out of it all."

In March, he will play the lead in a commercial comedy directed by Dinesh Babu (who directed another Nag hit comedy Hendthige Helbedi some years ago) and produced by Andhra producer Jayashree. Former Kannada leading lady Sudha Rani, who retired from films, married a doctor in the US and settled down there, is slated to make a comeback as a heroine in this film.

By June, Nag will again play the lead role in a Girish Kasaravalli film, in which he is to be cast a lower middle-class man with a fondness for pigeons who becomes a gambler and stops just before he loses everything he has.

Suhasini. Click for bigger pic!

Is Nag coming back to the screen because this is election year and he would like to re-awaken the mass adulation that helped him win his seat five years ago?

"Being in the public eye at such a time would certainly help," he admits. "Besides, when I went campaigning from door to door last time, people asked me to promise that I would not stop acting if they voted me to power. But as you know, people in Karnataka do not vote for you because of your films; they do not mix politics and cinema.

"Besides, you can never predict when a film will be released," he continues. "It may stay in the cans forever because of some technical or financial problem. The theatre situation is also so shaky that a film may get exhibited for just a few days. The real reason for my getting back to films is that I was a professional actor for 25 years and would like to continue to be one."

Will he then continue to romance increasingly younger heroines, run around trees and cover the crow's feet around his eyes with foundation?

"I hope that the American trend of older actors playing lead roles comes to our film industry," he says ruefully. "Look at how Sean Connery and Paul Newman have continued to star in major movies. I would like to do the same thing here."

Nag has been a very hands-on politician for a decade now, and has remained a loyal member of the state Janata Dal. At one time, he was known to be part of Ramakrishna Hegde's inner circle, but has stayed loyal to his original party more than his mentor, who has now started his Lok Shakti.

Nag has always been a star campaigner for his party, earlier with his brother Shankar (who died in an accident eight years ago), and is likely to hit the roads in the latter part of this year for the Dal. There has been some criticism about his efficacy as city development minister; is he himself satisfied with his performance?

Click for bigger pic!

"No," he admits readily. "By the time your ideas are implemented, they lose much of their sheen. Often, the bureaucracy is responsible for delays and discouragement. For example, we asked for Rs five crore (Rs 50 million) per city ward to improve infrastructure and set up a good sewage system. We were able to obtain only Rs 125 crores (Rs 1.25 billion) for all the wards together, and that too after so much time. It will be another three months before that project will get on the roads. Only now are projects like the ring road around Bangalore, started a decade ago in Hegde's time, actually becoming functional."

The actor-minister becomes very animated and engrossed when he speaks about the problems of Bangalore city.

We suddenly look up and see that the next shot long ready, the camera already focused and Suhasini repeating her dialogues for the next scene looking rather bored for the nth time. Director Sivamani has the patient look of a man who has been waiting for a long time.

"Are you waiting for me?" Nag exclaims in surprise. "Let's begin."

He moves back to his old seat at the dining table. Shivaraj walks in as unobtrusively as always and sits beside him. The camera rolls at once.

"Why do you scold him when you used to chase me in the same manner all those years ago?" asks Suhasini, tossing back her lustrous tresses. "Do you remember how you used to circle my house on your broken down old bicycle?"

We withdraw to the shadows again, happy to watch an old friend back on the sets, comfortable in his old milieu.