Earlier this month, actor Anupam Kher dropped the first look of himself as Nobel Prize-winning Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore from his next, which got mixed responses from the audience, with some, such as actor Swastika Mukherjee, even rejecting the idea of anyone essaying the eminent philosopher. “No one should play Robi Thakur. Leave the man alone,” Mukherjee had tweeted.

However, Kher stays unfazed and focused on the praise coming his way. “I was very amused by some people saying, ‘Oh, leave Tagore alone’ and that nobody should do this. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, and if someone says such things for 10 seconds, I will not waste my other seconds thinking about it,” adds Kher, wondering if his detractors consider themselves Tagore’s spokespeople.

“Going forward, people will tell us to not make projects on Gandhi ji. I found it absurd. What do you mean leave Tagore alone? Aise toh people will stop making projects such as Schindler’s List (1993) and Oppenheimer and even documentaries. Such remarks hold no importance for me. There is no one in the world that doesn’t get criticized. I can live with it,” says The Kashmir Files 2022) actor, who recalls telling his team to focus on the appreciation coming their way for the look, which took two months to create.

Kher, who has earlier played former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the latter’s biopic, The Accidental Prime Minister (2019), adds, “I have a lot of energy but no time to waste on people who are random and have nothing to do but to get noticed by criticizing somebody. Aap criticism ke liye notice hue toh kya hi notice hue.”