At the ripe old age of 39 – the title of the retrospective of Rahul Bose’s work at Masala! Mehndi! Masti, the largest South Asian Arts Festival at Toronto, is bang on this month. For an actor who was the youngest creative director at 26 with India’s leading advertising agency – Rediffusion – and now showcases his repertoire as a performer at a world forum – before he turns 40, it’s been an extraordinary journey.

“Why shouldn’t I try and put my flag in every genre? And it should be a pretty decent flag – just so that I can tick it off my list of stuff, lest I die with any regrets,” he says half in jest.
His recently-released children’s film, Chain Kulii Ki Main Kuli, is inspiring in the Lagaan mode. “We spent a lot of time writing and rewriting it, to make it contemporary, real, not to talk down to children and be predictable. Barring Makdee in the recent past, India has not really produced a decent children’s film. Unfortunately this genre is a poor country cousin of mainstream cinema. This is such a huge market in the West and India has never tapped into it. Here’s a brand of cinema which can talk to our largest demographic – and we don’t.”

Passion and integrity are key words in Bose’s cinematic lexicon. “Cinema means to me that one defining moment that reaches and sensitises, that makes you alive and fills you with ecstasy. That one moment of creativity in a movie that can bring tears to your eyes by the weight of its meaning. You can be brought to tears even by the most joyous scene. We all try and achieve this – and if we could achieve it all the time, it would just be the unbearable ecstasy of being! Cinema at its finest, most pure, elevates the human condition.” Counting Federico Fellini, Satyajit Ray and Francois Truffaut among his deepest influences, Bose however admits to not being blown away by any single film. “Little moments in many movies have shown me a lot about life. But if I had to single out anything at all, it would be the Apu trilogy as it appeals to the Bengali Indian boy in me.”

Bose chooses his scripts with scant regard to their commercial success. “It is dangerous to accept a film because you see in it the power to be a box-office success.” He believes there are two sides to evaluate opinion on his work. “Nobody’s reaction matters – on one level I am fairly ruthless with myself. I have what I call the ‘sleep peacefully in the night’ theory. I watch my movies and decide whether I can do that. On another level, everyone’s opinion counts because it is interesting and valid. Even if it is completely biased and coming from a place that is not full of integrity, it matters as it tells you about the person who is criticising. I push people to critique my movies, my performances, like a masochist. But box-office success is certainly not a vindication of the quality of my performance.”

Ultimately Bose believes his soul responds to art house world cinema. And multiplex cinema? What’s that? “Last night, I saw the biggest Hindi blockbuster playing in three screens at a multiplex while an art house movie in English was playing at one screen and a Hollywood animated feature was playing at another. Everything is a multiplex film.” What multiplex cinema has created is “a starvation of content – everything is shown, the good, the bad and the ugly. And just like any other profession which is going through an explosion, nine out of 10 things will be bad,” he states vehemently.

Bose has been singled out for his understated, naturalistic, subdued style of essaying roles. “But no one knows that I started my career in an over-the-top comedy with the play Topsy Turvy and at that time, many critics said that’s all he can do!” He also points out that contrary to his urbane South Bombay, intellectual persona, “I have played a villager from the Sunderbans, who doesn’t even speak city Bengali. I have also played a Malayali villager in Santosh Sivan’s Before the Rains.”

Amongst the many characters that he has portrayed on screen, Sumantro of KalPurush and Deboo of Mumbai Matinee are close to his heart. “I have enjoyed playing Snehamoy in The Japanese Wife. He is written as an invisible man – as someone whom people would remember vaguely. But there is a deep humanism and gentleness in him – he is so achingly beautiful in his simplicity, innocence and candour. The challenge was to make an invisible man charismatic on camera, somebody deeply plain into somebody unforgettable.”

A spate of releases this year further consolidates Bose’s range. “I have a fabulous art house world cinema like The Japanese Wife (multilingual, directed by Aparna Sen), a two-man psychological thriller, The Whisperers (in English, directed by Rajeev Virani) and Chain Kulii Ki Main Kuli (directed by Kitu Salooja), a totally unpretentious children’s film. If I die tomorrow I’d die happy!”