The actor's empty canvas........
VIJAY - the name everyone reveres in Bollywood. He wasn't just an actor par excellence but a star in his own right. He was something else, a magic. A method actor, and a master at depicting varied emotions. Switching and manipulating emotions was like a child's play for him. From making you laugh your head off in a comedy scene to making your heart ache in a sad one, the transition was seamless and effortless. The audience would just watch him in awe. He had an endless list of movies in which he had acted, each one a masterpiece, a testament to his intense acting. Vijay's roots were very modest, and he came from a very ordinary family who had seen the lows of life. He had scaled the heights of the glitzy world purely because of his amazing talent and perseverance. No nepotism, no out of the turn favors. As it happens most of the time, with all that fame, a little bit of arrogance and overconfidence seeps in. Probably it's a part of the package.
Today, on the set, Vijay was giving a really intense scene, crying over his screen mom's death. His voice, heavy with emotions, resonated in the studio. His eyes showed a pain so real, so raw, it felt like he wasn't acting at all. The director, with tears streaming down his face, and the entire cast and crew, they were just lost in his performance. The whole studio was enveloped with sadness which was unreal, until the director, his voice choked, finally shouted, "CUT!" Only then did everyone realize, "Oh, it's just a shoot." It took a while for everyone to recover.
Vijay leaned back in his chair, a smirk on his face, already thinking about his next scene. He picked up his phone, and saw innumerable missed calls from his wife Jaya. He felt a bit annoyed, but then a strange sense of uneasiness came over him as he called her back. "Vijay," Jaya's quivering voice, cut through the stillness and the quiet, "Maa guzar gayi hai, ghar aa jao jaldi se." The words just hung there, a cruel echo of the scene he'd just done moments ago. Vijay was numb, empty, and strangely couldn't react, his mind suddenly a deafening blank. He asked for a pack up, the news felt like a heavy, invisible weight. He rushed home.
The drive home was a blur of eerie silence, but so deafening - it matched the emptiness inside him. No tears, no frantic calls, just a cold numbness. As he walked into his house from the patio, the carvings on the pillars of his palatial house seemed to be frozen in silence. As he neared the majestic hall, he could faintly hear the sounds of people sobbing inside. The moment he reached his mother's bedroom, which was near the puja room, his family members, the house helps, all were in tears and the grim faces of his neighbors greeted him... On the bed, his mother lay still and peaceful. But Vijay, the master of emotions, was surprisingly bereft of any emotion. It was like a part of him had been cut out, leaving behind an empty shell. The actor could not even emote or feel.
What an irony - THE ACTOR COULD NOT ACT.
He looked around, everyone was in grief, but it was only him, who couldn't react. A cold fear crept into his heart. He couldn't understand why he wasn't feeling anything. Had his real emotions been taken over by his method acting? Had all those years of perfecting fake pain and joy, love and sorrow, stolen his ability to feel them for real? The question echoed in his mind, a scary thought that maybe, by impersonating every character over the years, he had stopped being himself. Like Shah Rukh Khan once said, "Hum ek baar jeete hain, ek baar marte hain, shaadi bhi ek baar hoti hai... aur pyar bhi ek hi baar hota hai." But for Vijay, it felt like his emotions had died many times over.
The pain of this realization was much deeper than any he had ever shown on screen. The iconic scene and dialogue from his mega blockbuster film DEEWAR reverberated in his mind in a loop. "Aaj mere paas gaadi hain..Bangla hain property hain..bank balance hai, sab kuch hai, lekin aaj mere pass maa nahin hain ... that's the bitter truth - the irony.
The applause, the awards, the fan following – it all felt empty in front of this crushing emotional void. The man who could make millions cry with just one emotion, one tear shed now stood before the biggest tragedy of his life completely, terrified, dry-eyed. He remembered another dialogue, "Rishte mein toh hum tumhare baap lagte hain, naam hai Shahenshah!" But here, in his own life's tragedy, he felt like a nobody.... an empty canvas.
Credits:
1. My friend Chetan Shah for sharing the concept of the story.
2. Internet: {Method acting is a technique or type of acting in which an actor aspires to encourage sincere and emotionally expressive performances by fully inhabiting the role of the character. It is an emotion-oriented technique instead of classical acting that is primarily action-based. - Source www.studibinder.com}
