Taaruk Raina on the similar backdrop of Akshay Kumar's Kesari Chapter 2 and The Waking Of A Nation: I hope the film…
Taaruk Raina opens up on Akshay Kumar's Kesari Chapter 2 and his The Waking Of A Nation being based on similar backdrop and leading a show for the first time
Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari Chapter 2 is set against the backdrop of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919 and tells the story of lawyer C Sankaran Nair who fought against the British crown. A month ago, filmmaker Ram Madhvani released the show Waking Of A Nation, set against the same backdrop, told from the perspective of a fictitious lawyer played by actor Taaruk Raina.
Ask him about the similarity, and Taaruk Raina is more than happy about it: “It is in a way very good. Who am I to compare myself to Akshay Kumar? I am just glad that on this topic, something else is also being made. And I hope that it works out very well and the whole world watches it because maybe when the audience watches that, they’ll come back to our show. I really hope the film does amazing things, and I hope that carries forward to us as well.”
The 30-year-old adds, “We get too engrossed in the business of a film today. This never used to be a conversation earlier. We kind of lose track of what a film can do, what cinema can do. I just hope that Kesari does very well, and everyone is more aware about this incident. I don't think people register what our people have been through to get our country to be free.”
Getting to play advocate Kantilal Sahni in The Waking of a Nation, Taaruk calls it an “opportunity of a lifetime”. “As an actor, the best thing that can happen to you, is if you get different parts to play, exercise your emotional range and grow. To have someone like Ram sir have that faith in me, it's surreal. You never think that t could actually happen until it does,” he says, adding, “Ram sir’s process was to not make the film stereotypical by having the characters talk in a certain way because we’ve seen only that in movies. That's just how movies have appropriated how people used to talk then. What we tried to do is make that our present for the viewer, rather than taking them into the past.”
Taaruk has played supporting characters or been a part of ensembles before this show. Here he got to take on the leading role and he admits it came with certain pressure. “There is a heightened level of responsibility. You do get scared when you jump a level. You are nervous and excited and that's only because you care about it so much, you want to do your best at it. You don't want to waste an opportunity like that, especially for people like me. If I don't do good things, I don't know if work will keep coming to me. It's not like I have anything to fall back on or anyone looking over me. I have to do the best I can constantly because I can't afford to say, ‘it's okay, next time’. I've been doing this for about 12 years now and I know how long it has taken me to even get a chance to do this,” he ends.
