our man, our hero
Coming from a Punjabi family, I am culturally familiar with Udham Singh. I grew up listening to the stories of Jallianwala Bagh and Sardar Udham Singh; I did not depend only on history books to gain knowledge about him, so when I got this role, I knew who this freedom fighter was. But the journey of this person and the emotional aspect of it was a revelation to me.
When it came to physical preparation, I realized that I have to play Udham Singh, a twenty-year-old and a forty-year-old Udham Singh. So, I had to lose 14 kilograms to play the young man and then quickly gain it in 25 days so that he looked like a man in his forties. For mental preparation, I had to rely on Shoojit Sircar’s vision of how he wanted Udham Singh to appear before the people. When we usually depict freedom fighters, we depict them as superheroes. But here we wanted to make him extremely human… We wanted the audience to feel that there is a Sardar Udham in all of us.
A tribute to Irrfan Khan
There was an immediate sense of honour, when I found myself in the void left behind by the death of Irrfan Khan. Replacing an actor of his caliber was a huge responsibility. If I can achieve even one percent of what Irrfan Khan would have done in this film, then I will feel that my work is done. So, this is my small tribute to an actor Irrfan Khan, an actor I love, an actor I admire and an actor who left us too soon.
Also, there was a lot of research material available for the role. I have not found anyone like Shoojit, who has studied the freedom struggle and the ideologies of these freedom fighters so deeply. I was really lucky to be involved in this film.
But the shooting of the film, especially the re-creation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, was emotionally exhausting. It was tough not only for me but for everyone in the film. And it was physically taxing too.
cinematic liberty
There is a piece of fiction in the film, but that is just to connect the dots. The emotional graph of Udham Singh’s journey was something that was imaginative. This is the expression of the freedom fighter that Shoojit wanted to show to the world. But apart from this, the incidents in the film are based on research and are absolutely true.
The film was made for the big screen as you can understand from its huge canvas. But, I think, times have changed very fast in the last eighteen months and we all have become the consumers of OTT platforms while all the cinemas are closed for a long time.
But then, OTT releases have a lot of plus points. Because, as Shoojit says, it’s not a Bollywood film, it’s an Indian film. So, this Indian film needs to reach all over the world and it is possible only through OTT platform. The film is reaching out to Indians across the world as it is important for them to reconnect with our history and feel the sacrifices that have gone into getting our country free. We needed a platform that would allow us to go and reach out to the audience.
With theatrical release there is always a pressure that the film is going to go out on the coming Friday. The film is timeless with OTT…even if you don’t feel like watching today, you can watch it after ten days. OTT platforms offer similar freedom.
message in medium
I would be happy if everyone feels that we all have a Sardar Udhaam and how much we have tried to humanize him. Shoojit said throughout the film that Udham is my friend and he is always with me. And I want people to feel that way. We don’t want him to be a martyr in the history books that you read and just close the book and put it aside. We want him to live within us.
(It appeared in the print edition as “Udham Singh Diary”)
Vicky Kaushal is an Indian actor
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