Written by Dipanita Nath |Updated: January 8, 2019 8:31:58 am
Actor Ashwath Bhatt on playing an Afghan warlord, a Kashmiri psychiatrist and Manto on screen and on stage this year
Ashwath Bhatt has dealt with his own share of conflict. He was a teenager in 1990 when his family fled Kashmir after threats of violence. He seldom visits Jammu, where his family sought shelter and were denied after escaping the valley.
At any time of the year, Ashwath Bhatt is travelling to somewhere else. A play in Delhi, a film screening in Pune, a shoot in Mumbai, a workshop in Germany and, every few months, something calls him to Kashmir. The Raazi and Haider actor is straddling two big-ticket works in the first half of this year — Dharma Productions’ Kesari, which releases around Holi, and Abhishek Majumdar’s play, Djinns of Eidgah, which will open in Jaipur in February.
“I have to be honest, I enjoy this. Being an actor is a blessing, for which I remind myself how fortunate I am every day. I am doing what I wanted. It needed sacrifice, struggle, hard work, saarey khaandan mein doctor aur engineer hi hai, dur dur tak koi arts mein nahin hai,” he says. Of his life, Bhatt speaks in fragmented sentences as if his words are hurtling to catch up with his train of thought. About work, his answers come pat.
“I am playing a Pashtun Orakzai chief called Gul Badshah in Kesari, which revolves around the Battle of Saragarhi in 1897. The film shows how 21 Sikhs, who were part of the British army, fought the Afghan army for a day and how they died and how they influenced the war,” he rattles off. How does he relate to his dark character? “I see Gul Badshah not as a soldier but a looter. Soldiers have a kind of dignity and ethics even against the people they fight. They can see each other’s point of view. Gul Badshah is beyond that. He is somebody who has no ethics. He is ruthless,” says Bhatt.
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