The Death of The Actor: What Sharmaji Namkeen taught me about the art of storytelling
Or rather, the spiral it sent me on.
What happens when the lead actor dies mid-way through a film’s production? There are the usual suspects. Some production teams hire stand-ins who shoot the rest of the scenes without facing the camera, maintaining the illusion that the lead is still alive. Some opt for CGI. Others, as I have come to understand, rewrite the movie to fit the absence of the actor.
If you are someone who has grown up watching Indian soap operas, you are not unfamiliar with multiple people playing one character. When an actor or actress falls out with their production, they are simply replaced by someone new, and the story goes on as if nothing happened. A show I used to watch as a child changed the lead actress a whopping 3 times, citing the actresses’ desire to move on to “better projects” (read: women are paid significantly lesser than their male co-stars).
But I digress. What I really want to talk about is the trailer of Sharmaji Namkeen.
Sharmaji Namkeen is an upcoming Indian coming-of-age tale about an old man who rekindles his love for life through cooking. Adorable, isn’t it? Except the lead actor of this film, Rishi Kapoor, passed away on 30th April 2020, from a year-long fight with leukemia. This left the production of Sharmaji Namkeen in a fix. They had completed shooting for only half the movie with him.
A few months after his passing, I saw an Instagram post that said that Sharmaji’s character would now be played by Paresh Rawal. I didn’t give it much thought, what with the peak pandemic insanity of the time.
This was until a few days ago when they released the trailer of this movie. The character Sharmaji is going to be played by both Paresh Rawal and Rishi Kapoor, in the same movie. No, you don’t understand. They are going to play the same character in the same two- and half-hour feature. Take a look at the trailer and you will know what I mean.
Cue: Spiral. I spent a couple of hours of (hyper-) focused research to find out if there was any other movie that did this. Some movies had many actors play the same character as an attempt at experimental storytelling. Apparently, David Levithan’s movie Every Day is about a girl who falls in love with a spirit that occupies a new body each day. What a beautiful way to challenge notions of sexuality and gender.
But two actors playing the same character was not a pre-planned decision in Sharmaji Namkeen. It was a decision they had to come to because of the unfortunate demise of Kapoor.
Why didn’t they just reshoot the scenes with Paresh Rawal? was the first thought I had. My second thought was that it must have been cheaper to do it this way. Filmmaking is, after all, a business too.
I wonder what I would have done if it had fallen upon me to take this decision. I think I would have done the same thing — I would have kept both shots and interwoven them in editing. There is something I want to say about the art of storytelling here.
Sometimes I forget that a story could be beyond the performer who plays the character, or even the character itself. Whether it is Rawal or Kapoor playing this role, Sharmaji’s story remains the same. Loads of Sharmajis are going to relate to the exhaustion of doing nothing; the loneliness of retirement; the desire to have a second life; the love of cooking.
Isn’t that why we tell stories in the first place? We know that there are many Elizabeth Bennets and Jo Marches and Hermoine Grangers. We return to these books again and again because our story is the same. For that moment, we are Bennet and March and Granger. We are fed up of being asked to marry someone; we are nerdy and intelligent; we too are sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for, but we too are so lonely.
Then again, will the story be subtly changed by the fact that two people are playing the same role? Will there be more nuance to Sharmaji? Will Rawal’s version and Kapoor’s version create a third, more complex Sharmaji? I think it would, and I can’t wait see if it does.
[TW: This section contains a reference to suicide and depression.]
There is another thing I want to say about legacy. What do you leave behind after you are gone? I am not enough of a cinema expert to be able to measure a performer’s legacy. But there is something about seeing the face of an actor in a brand-new film, long after they have left us.
This is not the first time Indian cinema has seen an actor’s film posthumously. Dil Bechara, the Indian remake of The Fault in Our Stars, starred Sushant Singh Rajput, whom we lost to suicide in the same dreaded year — 2020. At the time, Rajput had not completed the dubbing of his film. His part of the voice-over was done by Aditya Chaudhary.
I still haven’t gotten around to watching Dil Bechara. There is too much pain around his death. There was so much controversy and speculation, but no real conversation about the agony that is depression. Sometimes, I wonder how it would be to watch that movie and not hear his real voice. It is as if a part of him is lost; it’s not there for us to see here. Yet, every time I come across a poster or a song from his movie, he seems just as whole, just as alive as ever. I think there is something bittersweet about that.
Seeing Rishi Kapoor in this trailer felt the same way. I have not followed his work as much as I have Rajput’s. It still felt like he left behind a little goodbye before he left us.
I also think about Aditya Chaudhary and Paresh Rawal. What was it like for them to shoulder the legacy of another person through to their last ever finishing line?
It is possible I am overthinking this and nobody thought so long and deep before coming to this decision to keep both shots. Yet I’d like to believe that every story we tell and every choice we take in our storytelling journey is a conscious one and that it has an effect on how people love and exist and connect. That it will continue to have an effect long after we are gone.
