Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 30, 2020)

He was in Jaipur for the shooting of the 2007 action-thriller Eklavya: The Royal Guard. Producer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra had put him up at the Trident Hotel, but Saif Ali Khan slipped off to the Rambagh Palace and was sitting on the lawn, feeling like a movie star, when his mother, Sharmila Tagore, called. In the course of the conversation, she told him that he should do Shakespeare. “Maybe Othello,” she suggested.

By a happy coincidence, the next day, Vishal Bhardwaj approached him for Omkara, his Indianised adaptation of Othello. “I jumped at the chance, telling him my mother wanted me to play Othello,” the actor reminisces 14 years later, adding that the filmmaker admitted then that he actually wanted him for Iago aka Ishwar ‘Langda’ Tyagi. In response to Saif’s “Why not Othello?” Vishal pointed out that he was handsome while the Moor had been complexed about his looks, so he wouldn’t suit the part. “He was bluffing, but he did it well,” laughs Saif. The film opened on July 28, 2006, and made Langda Tyagi iconic.

Saif acknowledges that he had studied Shakespeare in school, but since he wasn’t thinking of becoming an actor then, it was more academic rather than artistic material. “But as Al Pacino says, the best practice for a western actor is to read Shakespeare. His language, meter, and the expression with which the words are delivered, all make for a great study. And Othello is the only play where the villain has more lines, great lines at that,” he avers.

The idea of playing a villager from the UP belt was challenging because, as the actor points out, despite his anglicised, English school background, he had a very Indian upbringing, with exposure to small towns like Shimla, Mussoorie, and Dehradun. “The Haryanvi Jat Hindi I spoke in the film was what I had heard all my life in Pataudi. So, I picked it up in a month. I was always good with accents and I can still speak it today,” he asserts, musing that when he sees his interviews from the time he was promoting the film, he finds himself explaining the dynamics of the role and the language in a strong angrezi accent. “I am comfortable with my education and background and so, don’t feel the need to live the role of the UP gangster.”

And what did his mother think of his performance? Saif can’t remember, but he recalls his father, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, telling him that while he’d done a good job, he hadn’t understood a word of what he was saying. The performance got him plenty of accolades and awards in the Best Villain category. There were rave reviews and letters of appreciation, from Amitabh Bachchan to Shah Rukh Khan. “People were saying Omkara is the highpoint of my career and I was thinking the high couldn’t come this early. Still, it was encouraging when seasoned actors called me Khan saab on the sets and accepted me as one of their own, instead of dismissing me as a boy from a privileged background who had got lucky, or a star from mainstream Bollywood,” he admits.

Saif was almost unrecognisable as Langda Tyagi, with yellowed teeth, an overgrown nail on little finger and a buzz cut. “I was shocked when Vishal told me that I’d have to cut my hair really short. Many, including my mother, tried to dissuade me, but he would say, ‘Bal qurbaan kar do’ and I did,” he recounts.

There was also the limp that gave him the name Langda. Vishal had suggested a loping limp, but Saif informs that he didn’t want to get into the disabled space. “Langda was not the kind of guy who’d get beaten up; he would do some damage himself even if it was through his scheming, rather than physically,” he reasons. So he opted for a slight limp, wearing one shoe with an extra heel to make his gait uneven and reminding himself to limp when he was on camera.

Would he play the role any differently today, you wonder, now that he is a more mature and accomplished actor? After a reflective pause, Saif says, “Maybe I would work on one or two bits which, in retrospect, seem not so good. But, for the most part, I’d do pretty much the same.”

And is there any other Shakespearean play he’d want to adapt? “Well, I always did find a parallel between the Bard’s characters and Mughal rulers. So, if I got a chance, I’d play Richard III like Aurangzeb, Hamlet as Dara Shikoh and King Lear as Shah Jahan,” signs off the history buff.