Source: Absolute India
By: Joginder Tuteja
AT HIS CANDID BEST, HRITHIK ROSHAN TALKS ABOUT ALL THAT IT TOOK TO COMPLETE THE ACTION EXTRAVAGANZA BANG BANG! WHEN HIS PERSONAL LIFE WAS IN TURMOIL
Bang Bang! releases today and in Hrithik Roshan's words, he has done his happiest film in the toughest times he has ever encountered.
With his health and personal issues prevailing for over a year now, it was a tough journey indeed for Hrithik to start and finish a film that has been made at a budget of Rs 140 crore.
That, when it was expected to be a quick film! However, meet the man today and he is at his cheerful best, while also happily reflecting at things that pulled him back all the time, even as he shrugged his way past all the deviations and diversions.
A hardcore action film at a time when physically you were at your most delicate phase.Didn't you ever feel like backing out?
I had this thing in my mind that once I go back to the sets of Bang Bang!, the experience would have to be better than ever before. I guess I got alright too in quick time as I carried this vision. Otherwise to think of it, that entire time period was so very stressful. There was pain in the brain. I couldn't hear much.
Silence was loud for me and my own voice used to hurt me. I couldn't concentrate if someone was saying anything. Any pressure rise in blood was harmful for me. If I was laughing or if I got tears in my eyes - mind you, even emotionally those were trying times - it used to be so painful. I used to think that ' This is it', that my life ends over here, that I would have done something in life to go through such pain. It was as if God had put me in a box.
It must have been tough to still rise.
It was, but then I applied a simple philosophy, though it is difficult to implement for sure.
Still, I tried and instead of asking the wrong questions - which we end up doing when we are troubled - I started asking the right questions. Hota kya hai that when we are struggling, we do end up asking, ' Why me? After all, I am a good guy!'. But then I refrained from doing that because agar aise socho toh answers would always be in the negative. I didn't ask why was life unfair because my perspective was that by virtue of it, life is supposed to be unfair. To be asking for life to be fair is like asking a tiger not to eat you because you are a vegetarian. Arey par woh toh khayega hi! I used to watch a lot of National Geography and Discovery channels. Even in nature, you see that when a calf is eaten by a lion right in front of its mother, all she can do is see it and then rush away with the herd in 30 seconds flat. You can't beat nature, and so have I discovered.
What did you do to come out of it? By attacking every moment of life which sounds unfair! I did that with all my might because I knew that once I would cross this dark path, there would be a place waiting for me which would be much more beautiful. That there would be this place with a good cool shade out there. It was exactly what I got in the form of challenges that Bang Bang! threw at me. I was already prepared for them because once you have crossed your fear once, and then again, and then over and over again, there is a pattern that you learn how to encounter. I knew for sure that there would be a way out and all I thought of was how to make my story the greatest ever for myself, if not anyone else.
Even in your personal life, you were going through a turbulent phase.
Of course, you don't get everything in life, and then there are some questions for which you get answers only later in life. What you need to do is stay strong. My motto now is that everywhere I go and whomsoever I meet, I will give love. I know that when it is unconditional, you get love back from everywhere anyways. God wanted me to be better than I was. He now wants me to be the best and that is something that I am trying now.
How are you doing that through movies, whether Bang Bang! or otherwise?
I choose films where through the characters that I play, I can bring in my own reflection.
Thankfully, my profession allows me to get a platform where I can express myself as a person. Also, I don't do films because of money. Now it is about making a contribution to the world where I believe that I can inspire people by giving them hopes and dreams through my films. I want to show them that impossible is nothing, fear is nothing, and all you have to do is keep moving forward.