Watching the tri-colour flutter on the tallest flag pole against the dark skies of the city on Thursday afternoon from the sixth floor of his hotel room, Nawazuddin Siddiqui was getting his makeup done for the press conference. Does he mind being photographed while his makeup session is on? “Not at all, yeh mera profession ka hissa hai . Makeup is a must for movies, stage, so I cannot dislike it,” he says. The actor, along with the rest of the cast of Freaky Ali was in the city to promote the film and he is absolutely delighted and excited about the movie, “because it’s a fresh concept and bohut pyara story hai . The character I am playing is very innocent and lovable,” he adds.
The movie which revolves around golf set Nawaz thinking. Before he stepped on to a golf course to try his hand at the sport, he admits he had always wondered what made golf such a talked about sport when he watched it on television. “The hole is right there, there are clubs; I wondered what made it so difficult to land the golf ball in the hole. Why so much of thought? Daal do agar daalna hai toh . Now, I know the intricacies of the game. It is a very technical game. It isn’t as simple as it looks. Besides being an intelligent game, it is also a game to push one’s personal limits,” says Nawaz. This despite Nawaz not being an avid sports person. “When we were growing up, where was the stress on sports or even the encouragement? It was all about studies. But I wasn’t a very bright student either,” he adds. Now, the father in him yearns for his son and daughter to pursue what they love. “I would want them to do what they want and encourage what they love,” he smiles. Looking fit in his crisp white shirt, Nawaz might seem to be casualabout his looks, but in fact he is very particular when it comes to his hair. As his makeup man adds the final look, Nawaz specifies a particular wave on his crown to be fixed with a hair-fixer.
What is his fitness regime? “ Fitness ka yeh kissa hai ke I landed, reached my hotel room and had biryani. Mutton biryani. Maza aa gaya ,” he says with an expression of bliss if he could still smell the aromatic biryani.
“But it is high time I focus on my fitness. I am blessed to be small built but that shouldn’t make me take my fitness casually,” he says as he stubs a hand-rolled cigarette. And since when has be been into hand-rolled cigarettes? “About 11 years. Someone suggested shifting to these to cut down on smoking owing to the laborious process of making, rolling them etc.”
In Freaky Ali , Nawaz will be seen as a salesman and also shaking a leg. He says his interaction and meetings with salesmen over the years, helped him play his character. Though he has portrayed several shades in a character, he admits dancing “was a difficult task. I have always shied away from dancing but there was no escape here. I did whatever I could with my limitations and I know I cannot match up to the others,” smiles the actor.
Nawaz comes across as a very friendly person who isn’t touched by his success and fan following. “This is all a freak chance for me. I was so down in the dumps when I was struggling, that I felt concepts like ‘happiness,’ ‘favourable’ ‘luck’ weren’t meant for me. So, I made an understanding with myself and my fate. So, I don’t let anything get into my head; not even my trolls. I respect honest criticism from people who are knowledgeable. Otherwise my reaction to anything negative or positive is silence,” smiles Nawaz.
How much do his roles affect him? “Except Raman Raghav which was a very complex, twisted personality nothing affected me much. Raman Raghav was intense and it disturbed me for quite sometime,” he says.
As for his future projects, Nawaz says he has a few projects in hand and “each of them is quite challenging.”
