The Master

On a bright sunny afternoon, I was heading to meet a man who is nothing less than a delight to talk to. As I stepped into his house, he greeted me with a warm smile and also prepared some ginger tea, and served the same to me with some lip-smacking crackers. I just couldn’t wait to know the unheard story of SAURABH SHUKLA. The man who once from a ‘nobody’ turned into an artiste whose performance will always give you goose bumps. Read on to know about his ecstatic journey in the word of arc lights.

- Nazifa Charania

Kallu Mamma’s Childhood Dreams

Saurabh Shukla is a man with many hats - as a child he wanted to be a filmmaker which then turned him into a writer, and in the process, he became an actor. How did you juggle with so many skills at once? With a smile that would make your day, he started off…“As a matter of fact, I never wanted to be an actor. I always wanted to be a filmmaker and that’s the reason I started writing during my childhood. Because I understood that if you want to make films then you have to write them, so my initial years were in writing. I was in Delhi so there was no connection to movies there. I realised that I can’t make films in Delhi, that’s when I decided to join theatre. And in theatre initially, I was directing and writing plays. One day an actor didn’t turn up, so I had to fill in, and I filled in and people liked me and I liked myself, so I said why not this?”

Did you undergo any training? I probe. He proudly says, “I do not have any formal training, I do not hold a certificate. But all the years in my theatre, I was studying. I was reading about what happens when you act, and I was seeing performances so the learning process was there and is still on, there was not one teacher but there were many teachers. But I was not formally educated in art.”

Lights, Camera, Action…