Anupam Kher on showing a judge's dilemma in One Day, and why his autobiography is celebration of his failures

Anupam Kher has been trying to run away from tags like “thespian”, “legend” and so on. “Big, big words! The next thing you know, they are going to give me the lifetime achievement award,” he says. But when you have spent 35 years in the film industry, the tags and titles catch up. Kher, however, is not interested.

That is one of the reasons why, he says, he has temporarily moved to New York, and dived right into the ongoing NBC television show  New Amsterdam , where he plays a neurosurgeon. “People treat 35 years like, okay, now it’s time to retire. But no! This is just the interval for me,” he says, in an exclusive interview. Marking this “interval”, as he likes to call it, is the release of Kher’s autobiography Lessons Life Taught Me Unknowingly that he announced a couple of weeks ago on social media. He added that he started writing the book from the age of 10. Did he always know that he was going to be famous, we ask.

He recalls a time in his childhood in Shimla, when he used to scribble his name on the desk in school thinking that someday a student would be sitting there wondering, ‘Wow, Anupam Kher sat here once’. He used to even add his name in astrology books under “famous people born in March”.

“When you come from a lower middle class family, the only thing you have is dreams. And in a small town, there’s plenty of time to dream. I remember instances from as early as the age of five. So, in my head, it was all getting documented for my book someday. The book, however, took me four years to write.”

Kher grew up on autobiographies of Charlie Chaplin, Ingmar Bergman and Kirk Douglas. “They inspired me during my own hardships. I want my story to do the same, especially for aspiring youngsters who feel they cannot make it just because they don’t have a godfather. I was a nobody once and today, I am looking back at a 515-film long journey. The book is not a success story. It’s a story of my failures, my shortcomings. But my father once told me, ‘Failure is an event, not a person’. All lives are about struggles and hopes. But I’ve always believed that all dreams come true. I want my book to make a contribution in changing people’s outlook. That way it goes beyond being just an account of my life.”

The book takes off from his autobiographical play Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai, that has been running for 14 years now. “But the interpretation on stage is very different from how it’s done in a book. It’s the power of the written word I guess.”

In talking about his own shortcomings in the book, Kher has steered clear of dragging names of others. “That’s not the kind of story I want to tell.” He is, however, yet to complete the Acknowledgement section. And no, there will not be any industry names in it. “That would be people-pleasing, and I’m not into that. Those who were relevant in my journey have been spoken about in the book itself. This is not like the end credits of a film,” he says, adding that Mahesh Bhat and Rajshri Productions are two names he will forever remain grateful to. “I am where I am because of them.” Among the Bollywood autobiographies that Kher has read are Naseeruddin Shah’s And Then One Day. “I liked the title. It’s also a fascinating read. Most of the other books that have come out of the industry are biographies. When you know the person well yourself, you don’t really feel the need to read what someone else has written about them.”

On the films front, the actor has his hands full, as always. Kher will be seen as a judge in his new release One Day that takes a look at the issue of unsolved criminal cases in the country. “For the first time, I had a chance to portray a judge’s dilemma. I’ve always wondered how does a judge walk the line between judging as per his duty, or judging as per his person. This film gave me a chance to address that,” he says. Another significant release in July will be  Hotel Mumbai  that is based on the 26/11 terror attacks, where he plays former Taj chef Hemant Oberoi. Kher has never shied away from helming political subjects even though, as was the case with his last film  The Accidental Prime Minister , he has received flak for it from certain sections of the media. “My life needs to make me comfortable before I make others comfortable. When you stick your neck out, you don’t remain popular. But you need to not escape your own truth,” he says.

If there is one thing that has remained a constant in his journey, it is the momentum and how he has embraced the new through the decades, be it experimental roles or his social media game. “I never take myself too seriously. Because when you do that, you stop growing. When they use terms like legend etc for me, I get a little worried. I need to make my job difficult, which is why I’ve moved to New York, where I still get to be a newcomer. It’s important never to lose one’s sense of wonder," he signs off.