Why is Bollywood Obsessed With Nawazuddin Siddiqui?

- Arnesh Ghose

I am toeing sacrilegious territory with this piece. When I pondered about this subject aloud at a house party last weekend, I was yelled and cussed at, my friends shocked at the fact that I was even choosing to question Nawazuddin Siddiqui, a man whose acting prowess has attained legendary proportions in the last few years. “There is no one better than him!” they said.

Any debate about an actor’s calibre requires a clarification about what the writer thinks of acting as a discipline. How would you define the process? Is it the ability to embody a character, become someone else and completely forget yourself? Is it the craft of sculpting a new personality, which is portrayed with training and technique? Is it the ability to empathise with and understand the spectrum of another individual’s emotional and personal experiences, immerse yourself in it and perform that personal journey with conviction and truth? I believe it is, and if we do agree, we also agree that every character an actor portrays needs to be completely divorced from the other — allowing no spillage or overlapping of one’s own personality or other characters — to produce a portrayal that is unique, honest and wholesome.