'Satya was a most memorable moment'

In between adjusting the set and deciding positions before staging his play, Saurabh Shukla shares with Metrolife, “I was a bad student and was unable to learn definitions. So I redefined them.”

This practically brings a rest to all further questions that one might want to ask about his peculiar choice of work. “I have not worked as a comedian but as a character who has done a lot of things apart from humour. Cinema has given me enough work but it is never enough,” he says sharing the gamut of roles that he has played.

Always wanting to be a filmmaker, Saurabh found his calling in acting and writing. “My struggle was that they made me write,” he says with pun intended. “I knew I had the ability to write but I hated it the most. However, now it has become a part of my life and the day I don’t write, I feel hollow. I have struggled to make films and that is something I still do. As an actor, the struggle wasn’t much but whatever it was, it has made me remain young and feel alive.”

Having been appreciated for his roles from Satya to Barfi!, Saurabh finds it more significant to connect to his audience with his kind of choices. “Once coming back from New York, I came across a man who said ‘I am a big fan of you’. I smiled like usual and walked past. Few minutes later, he came back and said, ‘I want to make a correction, I am a big fan of your choice of work’. It touched my heart since it has been very important for me to reach out to people and make them understand what I decide to do.” He still endeavours to do the same but refuses to imitate what he has already done.

“Satya has been one of the most memorable moments in my life,” he says in the context of its upcoming sequel where people are sure to miss his part of Kallu Maama! “I know that as an actor I don’t have a space in the sequel since my character died in the first part. But as a writer I have chosen to not to participate. But I would be excited to feel what the audience felt when they watched Satya in theatre. When we made Satya, nobody knew any of us apart from Ram Gopal Verma. So it was a genuine attempt which made a lot of difference in our lives. I would love to be part of any other project which makes such an attempt,” says Saurabh who will soon be seen in a meaty role in Rajkumar Hirani’s upcoming movie Peekay.

Meanwhile, he is ready with three scripts to be directed and believes, “Cinema gives you space. You should know how to take that space. I can’t live somebody else’s life. I like the films made by commercially successful directors but I don’t want to make them. It’s like ‘I 
like a rich man’s mansion
but feel very lost when
living in it’.”