Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; September 13, 2018)

While most of his contemporaries are eager to earmark their spaces, Vicky Kaushal doesn’t wish to define his territory. And that’s his biggest strength — to slip into a lead or supporting role, in any kind of film, and make it believable. Ahead of the release of Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan, the actor talks to BT about relationships and the choices he has made in his career. Excerpts...

In three years, you’ve played eight distinctly different characters. Is that a conscious attempt to avoid getting labelled?
I look for stories that are different, because that is how I will grow as a performer. Also, that’s how I will survive in this industry. When you don’t have a starry launch, like I had a backdoor entry with Masaan, you have to devise a way to survive. My initial films were not the choices I made. The only choice was to display my versatility and prove my worth. I am not saying that I was confident about what I was doing. I was also discovering myself as an actor, but I am glad I could do it. There were directors who trusted me. Without those opportunities, I wouldn’t have been able to carve this path, even if I wanted to. It’s an additional burden to make space for yourself in the industry, but if people do that for you by appreciating your work, you won’t be under any pressure to protect it. It will stay as long as you do your job well. Acting between action and cut is temporary, the result is permanent.

Your role in Manmarziyaan — that of a DJ, Vicky Sandhu — seems to be an easy-breezy one, but maybe it’s not, especially for you, who appears to be a simple boy from a modest Punjabi family. Was it tough turning into Vicky Sandhu?
(Laughs!) I am a Robbie (Abhishek Bachchan’s character in Manmarziyaan) in real life, very Ramji types, but I am happy to play the reckless, carefree and commitment phobic Vicky Sandhu on screen. The trailer shows me wearing my pants low, with my underwear showing. That was my idea, because I knew what sort of a character Vicky is. He has blue hair and is into a certain kind of music. So, for him, his underwear being visible is a part of his mad and impulsive personality. In fact, I told the person handling costumes to get me the wackiest underwear available. It’s his eccentricity that drew me to the character. He’s directionless, but very sure that no one can love Rumi (Taapsee Pannu’s character) more than him. Vicky Sandhu is my alter ego and that’s why I had a ball of a time playing him. If you play Punjabi music right now, you will see the shift from Vicky Kaushal to Vicky Sandhu; I’ll start dancing on the table. It’s like Superman and Clark. They are the same people, one hidden beneath the other. People like Anurag Kashyap know this about me, and so, he just told me to unleash that monster on screen. This is the most liberating part I’ve ever played.

Manmarziyaan’s take on relationships is contemporary and realistic. Do you think the definition of love has changed over generations?
Love hasn’t changed and it never will. You will still feel the butterflies in your stomach when you meet that special person for the first time, when you can’t take your eyes and thoughts off him/her. It doesn’t matter how new or old school you are. However, with time and exposure, the social fabric changes. So, while love remains the same, our approach towards it changes. Today’s generation is not just commitment-phobic towards relationships, but everything that seems permanent. Most people didn’t do that back in the day. I’ll take my parents for instance. My dad met my mom just once before their marriage. My mother got married to a man who she didn’t know anything about and moved to an unfamiliar city from Punjab. It scares me to even think where she got the courage to do this. Look at our generation, we question everything the minute we encounter a difficult situation. We start doubting and questioning the relationship. Love is not complicated, people are and that is changing the perception of love.

You said you are a very ‘Ramji type’ of person in real life. While, like you said, your generation is generally commitment-phobic, are you old-school when it comes to relationships and love?
I am from this generation and I am like many others, who question everything. I’ve been in relationships. After a rough day, you have big questions about compatibility and whether the effort you’re making for the other person is valued or not. We don’t think that the significant other could have been in a bad mood that day. I have gone through that myself and messed up my relationships. I talk out of experience that relationships don’t get messy; it’s our heads that are messy. People’s expectations and beliefs screw up relationships.

Has a messed-up relationship made you cautious about entering into another one?
Nothing has made me edgy. Whenever a relationship doesn’t go on the right path, it affects me in some form, but it hasn’t spoilt anything for me. It’s not like I want to be left alone to brood. That shows the girl in a bad light, which is not right. After going through a rough patch, you have to wait for things to happen on their own. Don’t push yourself either way.

You’ve been widely appreciated for playing Kamli in Sanju and Iqbal in Raazi. With your third release this year around the corner, do expectations from the audience and the industry burden you?
I cherish this sense of responsibility and expectations. When I became an actor, I knew that there were only two ways of going about it — either I become an actor who has expectations, or the reverse of it. I have worked hard to be here. A lot has happened in these three years. There’s a poem by Rudyard Kipling that says, ‘Treat success and failures as imposters.’ I’ve treated them the same way. These are phases which will come and go. If people like my work, it’s not because I have made them fall in love with a character on my own. So many people have contributed to make my work appealing. I will never forget that.