"How can you be part of Hindi cinema without knowing Hindi?": When a director shooed John Abraham out of an audition

John Abraham who turns 50 today has a come a long way. Today, he can make projects happen the way he wants them to.

There was a time this outsider in Bollywood with no connections in the film industry was knocking every door for a break. One such producer-director was Anubhav Sinha. This was back in 2001 when Anubhav was planning his first directorial venture Tum Bin. The quadrangular love story was planned with newcomers.

Naturally there was a steady torrent of auditions happening. One of the hopefuls who knocked at Anubhav’s doorstep was a boy from Kerala named John Abraham who seemed “almost desperate” to get a break.

But even before John could audition for Tum Bin, he was rejected. The reason being his complete lack of familiarity with the Hindi language.

“How can you be part of Hindi cinema without knowing Hindi?” Anubhav shooed John out of the audition.

John took it up as challenge to learn Hindi from scratch. Today he speak the language much better than many superstars.

Another hurdle that John faced initially was his name. Many advised him to adopt a screen name, as ‘John Abraham’ didn’t sound right for Bollywood.

There are two Bollywood director who completely believed in John all along. One was Deepa Mehta who signed John as a Dhoti clad reformist inspired by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in Water. Everyone thought Deepa had gone mad. But she believed John was the right fit as her mother too believed the same. After Water John Abraham was director Deepa Mehta’s blue-eyed boy .

The Toronto-based director had roped in John for a mainstream Hollywood film Luna.

Deepa said, “After working with John I realised what a wonderful human being he is. He just brings so much positive energy to the location. And he’s so willing to learn and participate. If I have my way and if he fits in I’ll cast him in all my films.”

John was her first and last choice for Luna. Warner Brothers gave Deepa a ready script by David Ward. Both John and Deepa were revved up about Luna. It addressed itself to their favourite subject, the environment. From the start Deepa was a child of nature. Water had a very strong ecological element. Their mutual love for nature bound Deepa with John together. And of course the fact that her mother adores him just ended all discussion.

Alas, Luna never got made. And Nishikant Kamat who could get the best out of John passed away. Ever since then John has been struggling with a series of over-stuffed pumped-up patriotic bilge where he simply must rip off his shirt at the end to prove that the patriotic genre doesn’t belong to Akshay Kumar alone.

Nishikant Kamat was a director who understood John’s physicality as well as his emotional strengths. In Rocky Handsome, Kamat used both the qualities to create a man doddering on the edge of self-destruction. I can’t remember the last time John did something as impressive as Rocky Handsome.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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