Naseeruddin Shah once said that unless you have something burning inside you, you cannot become an actor. He is right. This is a jungle world and there are heartaches on the road to stardom and heartbreaks while surviving stardom!
In so many years of my writing on films, I have been exposed to innumerable moments where I’m left open-mouthed by the savagery of what I witness and yes, it has been unsettling, especially when I was younger and looking for answers but gradually I learned that every conflict does not offer instant solution and time resolves it all, in its own unique way.
Film industry inculcates endurance, a wisdom that is beyond age and an exposure to life that is priceless. I have to say this in all fairness, that there is another side to show business too, the better side that only an insider can know.
Cinema is the most sensitive of all performing mediums where multiple talents come together and collectively showcase their talent. It is a magical process that only those engaged in it can experience. A world of creativity and compassion, of sharing and bonding on an everyday basis that an outsider can never imagine because inaccessibility prevents identification.
There is anguish and heartache too. Insecurity is an overwhelming emotion in any creative profession and in the film industry even more so. Film stars are peddlers of emotion. There are more emotional wrecks in the film world than in any other place. Everything comes in excess here. There is shame and scandal, exhibitionism and eccentricity but there is also affection and generosity, diversity and dynamism that you cannot experience anywhere else. Cinema is obsessive and once you have been a part of it you feel incomplete without it!To be continued