The Bollywood baddie heads for Hollywood

Suparn Verma

You lean on the bell, and then look directly into the camera that stares right back at you. There is a long silence before the door swings open. You walk inside, hesitating an uncertain moment before venturing into the fortress of one of baddest of baddies on the Indian screen.

Bang! The door slams shut banging hollowly with a sound reminiscent of the last nail in the coffin.

You wait for the echoes to die down and then hear the slow, measured tread coming up behind you. You turn around, steeling yourself to face your worst-ever nightmare.

It's him! The blot on the landscape, the pimple on the face of the earth, the one who hasn't committed every heinous crime people have seen him do. On screen, he has killed every actor worth his name, raped and molested almost every contemporary screen heroine, killed hundreds of innocents and smuggled enough arms and drugs to give the drug trade a standing ahead of ACC.

He has many names. He has many faces. And he's not in jail because the police, without the proof to nail him, are left to thump the table in frustration.

"Hallo, I'm Gulshan Grover. Nice to meet you," he says pleasantly. No cracks, like Dracula, about me having come in of my own free will. And, unlike the garish decor of his reel-life mansion, his home's quietly done up in white and grey. Of course, it could be just the home of his latest victim and he just hadn't had the time to move his favourite iron maiden in.

He motions you to sit at the chair near - too near -- the balcony overlooking Versova seaface.

Grover measures you, his eyes bloodshot, rubbing his three-day old stubble over and over. He smiles easily, diabolically. Then unexpectedly talks politics.

"It was sad what happened yesterday (March 30)," he shakes his head in sorrow. "Deve Gowda's closing argument (before the Indian prime minister lost the vote of confidence) will go down in history. It's such a shame we lost a man like him. I'm a very apolitical person... but for the first time I genuinely believed in a politician." Then he looks reflectively out the grilled window.

Grover's one of the most reputed villains of Bollywood and, at the time most Indian villains are thinking of retiring after a few more murders, he's planning to expand operations into Hollywood.

He plays the main villain in Jungle Book-2, Buldeo, the evil uncle of Mowgli who wants to take over his nephew's kingdom. In Monsoon, based on the real life legend of Dona Paula, Grover is the local Mafiosi whose wife is the reincarnated Dona who meets Paula. In Rose and Marguerite he drops the characteristic sneer to play the good guy, the rebel leader up in arms against a tyrant.

"What happened was this, I was in the US doing shows with Shah Rukh Khan, and I met Ducan McLachlan the director of Jungle Book-2. He was fascinated by my face. He kept on talking about my eyes. He liked my eyes because they were big and globular and expressive. He talked to me about playing the role of Mowgli's uncle and I said okay." He pauses.

"After I returned to Bombay I kept sending faxes and made call after call for two months but there was no word from him. Till one day he called and told me, "Sorry, but Columbia Pictures wanted to have an American actor with his face painted black. I was heart-broken."

The mobile broke his train of thoughts. "Yeah," he said in a surly voice and walked away, presumably to discuss the successful delivery of an arms contingent across the border, because he came back looking pleased as punch.

"Haan, so where were we?" He was just outside Jungle Book-2, we told him.

"Yeah," he agreed, adding with a heavy rasping laugh. "Then one day I got a call from Sri Lanka. The director wanted to know if I could rearrange my dates because they had shot with the actor for one day but there was something missing. So off I went to the location. On the first day of the shoot everyone was a little wary of me because it is very rare than an actor is replaced after shooting begins... But once the camera began rolling all their fears disappeared. They knew that their director and producer had been right," Grover says with an immodest smile.

"While we were shooting, my cabin had 'Bad man of India' sprayed on it, but the production girls crossed that out it and instead put up 'Sexy man of India' there instead." Lousy taste, you mutter under your breath before mulling inconsequently how many of the unit made it back.

"You know, Jag Mundhra the director of Monsoon says that I'm the only ethnic-looking actor who has the drive that will make me work in the west." The voice is getting a little boastful as he goes on to discuss the cleanest of his roles abroad.

"Rose and Marguerite is being directed by French director Denise Ganier, I play a rebel chief who is fighting against the king. I save the life of Rose, whose twin sister Marguerite is in love with Prince Nadja. I (rather, the character he plays) have an hard exterior, but inside I have a lot of emotions suppressed... One day Marguerite saves my life and destiny brings us together again..." Some more lines of this order and he mercifully eases off, to discuss Desperate Connections, the controversial film on child labour.

"In Desperate Connections, I play a journalist... The west likes to believe that there is no child labour, and that's exactly what my character does. He paints a rosy picture for their benefit. It is a hard-hitting film... and will premiere at Cannes."

So who is making the film? He closes up. "That is all I'm going to talk about. I'm not allowed to talk anymore on this subject." The code of Omerta is very strict, it appears.

An uncomfortable silence wells up between us. To fill in the gap you ask him how he compares Hollywood with films back home.

The question seems to amuse the old Hollywood hand.

"Lemme explain to you the set-up of the Hindi film industry. First, there is no script before the film is made. Actors are approached with this line, 'We will pay you this much, and since you have such a big stature we will not waste you.' That's how one becomes part of a project. I have heard of tales, about directors, for example J P Dutta, who, on approaching you for a film, won't even show you the script. You are expected to work for them liked bonded labourers." Like all good Bollywood baddies, he loves working himself up into a passionate rage.

His idea of work is not to land up on the day of the shoot and begin acting. "I need to spend time and have some discussion with the director... I need to know my character's motivation as well as work on the character... Today, I have finally arrived at a position in which I can put my two-bit in." But the culture is getting better, he says.

"Things are changing now. The old system won't work with today's actors. Today, finally, after a long time you have actors sitting for story-telling and music sessions and having discussions with the action director even before the shooting begins. You won't find an Akshay Kumar or Ajay Devgun absent while the story session is going on. When they see some action sequence they like they talk about it to the action director. Though actors in the south realised years ago that if a film suffers they suffer too, we too are slowly learning our lessons."

Writers, he says, often create inconsistent characters, so he goes about rectifying the damage. "I have to take charge as far as my character is concerned."

He points out that "in the first reel of the film you will have the villain talking about destroying the world and everyone (terrified) around him, and in the fifth reel the writer has a guy coming up to the villain in his den and giving him a piece of his mind and walking off in style. Why? Because he is the hero of the film! But then why didn't he kill the villain in the 5th reel itself ? Why does he have to wait till the 15th reel?

"I try to find a bit of logic in the characters they create. I hate saying lines that have been said over and over. I hate being in the same get-up over and over again. That is one reason why I give each character I play a different look. In the beginning everyone said, 'He is covering up his lack of acting skills behind his make-up,' but over the years I have been able to dispel that myth."

Then he refutes what he said about earlier about taking charge of his own role.

"I'm a professional. I do as I'm told. The added perk of having people listen to you comes with age." Today, he says with pride, he has a reputation of being an actor who will work very hard. "At one time I used to work in 50-60 films at a time; today, I'm doing only 10 films and I have time to prepare my roles... I know that I have arrived..." That endearing modesty again.

A cup of black coffee is placed before you, "Have it, please," he presses you, a little too insistently. You look worriedly at the cup before lifting it to your lips, your eyes on the gently sloshing fluid. Is it spiked? Worse, is it poisoned? Meanwhile, Grover makes small talk.

"I only have two cups of tea a day... I drink occasionally. That's the only time I smoke -- when I'm womanising." He bursts into laughter, amused by his own sense of humour. You smile, and stop smiling when he tells you he is more than one person.

"I'm two different personalities altogether. Being bad is part of my job... It's a case of switch on and switch off. If you cannot do that, you are not a good actor. Even in your personal life.

"I never carry my home to my work. It affects people around you. I mean, if your mood is bad 'cause your girlfriend gave you hell last night, I'll take it once or twice. After that you are affecting the whole set-up. You have to be a professional in both these aspects. At home I'm not at all interested in what I was doing during the day."

He looks around the room then says he has a low opinion of the tube. "I never let my son see television in his early years," he says, motioning towards the television set huddled in a corner. "This is my living room but look where my television has been relegated.

"The concept of a family watching television together does not work well with me 'cause I might get embarrassed. I cry watching emotional scenes, and the person sitting with me might laugh, thinking that I act in films and still..." Talking of family and children, he comes to another sore point.

"I have seen children from families in the film industry come up to me and only talk about how I bashed up their father. It is okay coming from people who are not in the industry but when you find such fascination within the industry its sickening. I don't want to walk out of the studio and walk into another one at home."

When his son later started seeing films on the sly, I bought a television home. One day he even started asking me about my films... I called him over to me and said, "Listen pal, you want to know about any technicality about films I'll clarify them for you. But if you ever talk to me about my films, you are walking out of that door." That truculence also saves Grover from answering uncomfortable questions.

"As a villain I have limited emotions. That's why when I get a emotional scene to play I don't use glycerine, I actually cry. And people from the unit gather round because scenes like this do not happen often."

Speaking about moral values, villain that he is, Grover quickly denigrates all the values the honest prole lives for.

"Today the Dale Carnegie kind of quality does not work," he says dismissively. Today, one needs the job done. It's not about me being positive and nice to everyone and impressing as many people as I can. You may be close to me but if you cannot deliver than you are of no use to me." Nietzsche would have loved him.

Who were his heroes. One of those disarming giants, like Capone, Idi Amin, Sade, maybe the fictional Moriarty or Arturo Ui? None apparently. He sets his own standards of infamy.

"I never had any idols. When you idolise someone they start falling short of your expectations. You start realising they are as normal as you are and then disappointment creeps in. You might find someone's work good and someone's work bad, but good is a very relative term, especially in the field of art. It's not like mathematics."

His ambition is to figure in the Guinness Book of World Records because "in my career, I have worn 200 wigs, 100 beards, 200 moustaches".

Wig or no wig, you ask him what it is like to be killed again and again, disposing of more lives than a alleyfull of cat. Doesn't it hurt?

"No," he says with finality, "It's important for the villain to die. It's poetic justice. The audience must be told that he cannot get away with murder."

He sees your amazement and smiles warmly. "You know, people are surprised when they meet me. They expect this really nasty mean guy but when they find this educated -- modesty prevents me from saying intelligent -- and aware guy, they are shocked." We were, we were. But we also had this lingering doubt that we were being fattened for the kill.

Very nice and all that but we've got to get away, we told him, edging away from him.

"Yeah, you must be getting late. We have been talking for a long time.It's time for you to go."

He walks with you up to the lift and watches silently as the lift doors slide open. "Goodbye, it was nice knowing ..." His words are sliced by the shutting doors.

You smile. You survived.

Then, over the whirring of the motor above you hear it, or think you do.

A low tick, tick, tick... coming, it seems, from the lift roof. Is that an evil laugh you hear? Fear grips you, leaving a long, gaping hollow in your chest.

You close your eyes and wait... Tick, tick, tick.