Nothing amiss here

Manpriya Singh

When you look at Pavan Malhotra, you might not see a star chased by frenzied mobs, but you see an actor ever remembered for his body of work. There he is, Geet’s uncle from Jab We Met, Tiger Memon from Black Friday, Coach Gurudev Singh from Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Deep Singh Rana from Punjab 1984, Fakir that fetched him a National Award and the television serial Nukkad Natak.

“Yes, courtesy the amazingly different characters I have played, I might not have a set style and hence might not be mimicked like the big stars, but I am certain of having created a collage with my work which will be considered at least a dot in the history of cinema,” he answers with both humility and content while shuttling from fluent Punjabi, to English to Hindi.

A cop once again

In Chandigarh for his latest, a ‘who dunnit’ murder mystery, Missing on a Weekend, a film where, he, once again, plays a cop. Even before we can repeat ‘once again’? He answers, “I have been asked this question so many times, yes, I play a cop and though I am wearing a similar uniform, I play a totally different character in a totally different story. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I have taken really long pauses in my career but I wouldn’t do anything that doesn’t excite me.”

The current film sees him play a CBI top cop, investigating into the case of a group of missing friends in Goa. Coming up is Punjabi movie Gelo, a woman’s journey wherein he plays a village character. “I play an aarhati.”

Another star kid in town

Never mind, he can sing, loves music, can play the piano, but for Karan Hariharan (son of music legend Hariharan), acting bug bit a little harder. “I love acting. I want to act, do regional cinema, Hollywood and all kinds of roles,” he is candid and chatty. “Fortunately I come from a family where art is respected ,” he adds, having learnt six kinds of martial arts namely, boxing, kick-boxing, MMA, tai-chi, wing chun and capoeira. So, what did his father have to say? “He said ‘theek. The trailer was nice, aur tu theek tha’,” he laughs, adding, “My father likes to underplay things.”

Goa, crime, drugs—did they take offence?

For his fiction inspired by a couple of incidents, writer and director Abhishek Jawkar puts together an almost entirely new cast comprising, among others, Dishank Arora, Mahsa Kooshesh and Karan Hariharan. “Whenever I have gone to Goa, there’s always an atmosphere of fun and carelessness. I have always wondered how scary would it be if things went wrong here. That inspired the script of the film.” With the government (rather than the people) of Punjab taking absolute offence to reality inspired state of addicts being depicted in Udta Punjab, did he face any consequences for depicting Goa into crime space? “I did receive a message from their PR department asking me to put disclaimers.” Releases on July 1.

[email protected]