Actor and producer Sanjay Suri is a quiet, enduring presence in an industry that thrives on noise. As the producer on the cusp of the release of his new projects including the internationally acclaimed Chauranga, he looks back at the years when he was still discovering what it means to be a part of the world of cinema. He recalls, “I joined the film Industry in 1999 with my first film Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi as the second lead. When the film released, fortunately my work was well appreciated as a newcomer and soon I was doing two more films, one of which was more mainstream and the other was Daman. Somewhere during the process of working as an actor, the in-between waiting period became tough to negotiate as it was something I was not used to.”
He had been a successful model since 1994 and so the wait for auditions would get to him. ”This period felt very strange and the indefinite down time made me very uncomfortable,” he shares.
The waiting was tinged with a sense of deep discomfort and he says, “I had been displaced from Kashmir just a few years back and I did not have the luxury or the desire to wait. I had been taught to value time and to just wait and the dependency of an actor (on opportunities provided by others) made me very uncomfortable.”
Then came the desire to start something independently and Sanjay says, “I was used to doing things on my own and I thought,’why not do what I like to do and do it may way?’ This sort of segued with my inner urge to be able to tell stories that I believed in. That was the time when I decided to produce as well.”
He then encouraged his friend Onir to write and direct their debut feature in 2005. This was the much-acclaimed My Brother…Nikhil. The film based on the life of an HIV positive swimmer addressed gay relationships and the stigma faced by people in same-sex relationships, with fearless sensitivity.
Sanjay’s tryst with independent story-telling had begun.
Anticlock Films, the company that Sanjay now runs with Onir has a consistently good track and their fourth film project Chauranga, directed by Bikas Ranjan Mishra won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature at IFFLA ‘2015 (Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles). It also won the Best Film nod at MAMI ‘2014 (Mumbai International Film Festival).
Says Sanjay,“Chauranga is about a 14-year-old boy who wants to go to school but being born in a village where caste-hierarchy, oppression and debauchery are the rules of the day, he innocently develops a strong infatuation which could be dangerous for him. Chauranga is a layered film and that is what made it very exciting. When one doesn’t have the luxury of funds, there can be no wastage but at the same time when there is a wealth of ideas, a great cast and a crew backed with a good story, then the definition of challenge changes. I sincerely hope that the film achieves its full potential in sensitising people towards an inclusive life rather than an exclusive one and also does well commercially and artistically. We hope to tell many more compelling stories using the medium of films.”
Sanjay’s own life has been a lesson in resilience and overcoming great odds and tragedy. The displacement from Kashmir also saw him suffer the loss of his father who was shot dead by terrorists and he says without a trace of self-pity,“My parents and grandparents inculcated a lot of faith in us as children and taught us to focus on the positives and be grateful to the universe for giving us so much. No one is immune to loss and pain and neither were we, but there was some inner belief or strength, which is difficult to explain or summed up in words. Of course my immediate source of inspiration was and has been my mother who despite losing her husband to the bullets of Kashmiri militants in 1990, her home, her identity, her vocation and much more, never lost faith and showed remarkable dignity and resilience to fight the worst period of her life. Till date, I see her and get the courage to face the world.”
Evaluating his own growth as an artiste and a person, he says, “I truly believe that the journey is the goal and for me overcoming a small hurdle can sometimes be a big breakthrough as I find it easier to handle bigger things by now. As an actor, each and every time I perform, it feels like a new breakthrough. For me small is big and less is more.”
And the one seminal lesson he has learnt from his life?
“I read this somewhere and it made so much of sense to me. The question should not be, ‘What do you do for a living?’ It should be, ‘What do you live to do?”’
Reema Moudgil is the editor and co-founder ofUnboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ with Timbre Media and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US and is now retailing some of her art at http://paintcollar.com/reema. She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.