Vikram Gokhale: The actor who never acted

There is never going to be  another Vikram Gokhale. We all say good things about the dead. But Vikram Gokhale was an astonishing actor who never seemed to act. He was so much into his characters that we never saw Vikram Gokhale. We only saw the characters he owned. In his career of 59 years, Vikram Gokhale acted in every medium, from theatre to television to cinema in at least two major languages- Marathi and Hindi.

Vikram Gokhale, who gave outstanding performances in a string of well-received films, was a fourth-generation actor .In India, besides the Kapoors, the Gokhales were the only actors spanning four generations. His two daughters are into community theatre. Both of them are very good dancers. And Vikram rated them as good actors because, as he said, they are not caught out acting.

“An actor should not hard-sell skills. Acting should not be about peddling your abilities. To me to be seen acting is not acting. To act to believe is acting. Acting is the art of creating the illusion of the truth. You have to make people forget you are acting,” Vikram once told me.

One of Vikram’s most popular role was that of Aishwarya Rai’s disciplined musician-father in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam.

Recalled Vikram fondly, “I had some fun times shooting that. Sanju (Bhansali) is a very poetic director. After the film, we meet once in a while. When he got to know I turned director, he congratulated me. He has kept in touch.”

Vikram Gokhale considered the doyen of Marathi theatre Vijaya Mehta his mentor. Vikram made Ms Mehta his official mentor. When she saw Vikram’s directorial debut Aghaat (2010), she wrote him a letter telling him about the areas in the storytelling where he could have improved. That’s where his idea came to him to make her his official consultant with a proper fee.

“I am what I am because of Vijayaji. Whatever I am today is because of her. I’ve built a library of performances because of her,” Vikram was eternally indebted to his mentor.

In 2013, Vikram Gokhale was happy to share the National award for best actor (for the Marathi film Anumati) with Irrfan Khan. “I’ve seen Irrfan in Paan Singh Tomar. It’s an outstanding performance and film. But I believe both of us are capable of a lot more. There are so many actors, colleagues that I admire. I love collecting good performances in my library. Annu Kapoor for example, I am so happy he has won the National award for Vicky Donor. Other actors I admire include Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Satish Shah, Pankaj Kapur, Farooq Shaikh and Shabana Azmi. I also like Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh and Ranbir Kapoor. Our Nana Patekar has been stereotyped. But he’s brilliant. Luckily for me, I never allowed myself to be typecast.”

Vikram Gokhale had one unfulfilled dream as an actor. “I want to play a blind old man. The only convincing performance of a blind man I’ve seen in our films is Naseeruddin Shah in Sparsh.”

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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