An artist can never be satisfied

“If I would ever debut again, it would be in a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film,” Amitabh Bachchan had said a year back. And now, starring as a teacher in a very talked about film, Black, he is far from retreating from that statement. “There has not been a single shot in the film that I might have done before,” he said while promoting his film in the city on Tuesday. “It has been the most challenging role in my career.”
In Black, Amitabh Bachchan will play the teacher of a young girl, played by Rani Mukherjee, who is impaired in three faculties. “She understands only the language of touch. I play a retired teacher of a school of handicaps who is approached to help out this young girl and how I help her achieve whatever she wants to achieve.”
As a teacher of a young girl who cannot see, hear or speak. The role required him to be extremely fluent with the vocabularly of those challenged in all the three faculties as he was to teach the young girl, how to communicate with others.
“We (Rani and I) underwent training for six to seven months before shooting for the film and even on the sets we always had a trainer with us. We listened to tapes and read a lot about the activities of the people with similar handicaps. We also visited the Hellen Keller Institute in Mumbai,” he says. “The desire of those people to be normal makes you feel that you are misusing your faculties. It is very inspiring.”
“There was not a single day when I did not leave a part of me at the sets of the film and take something back as well,” he says.
Doing a role as different as this involves undertaking a great risk but he was far from deterred by that. “It surely does involve a lot of risk but along with that comes a realisation that such films do not keep happening and if you have got that one opportunity it must be preserved and valued. I hope I will get to do more of such films,” said the superstar.
If there was one person, he would not stop praising, it was director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. “It is very difficult to create something as elaborate as Devdas at one time and then make a film like Black. It is a huge canvass.”
On whether he feels Bollywood has come a long way he agrees, “There has been great changes in the industry in the qualitative fields. We have so much better faciltites and technology that allows us to be exposed to everything around the world. There is such a huge influx of young talent and that too of girls and boys in equal proportions. They have the zeal to excel in them.”
So what should the young learn from Black, “Education is not to be mixed with films,” he retorts. Despite his numerous endorsements, he always appears different in each of them. “I take it on me as a challenge that I wake up to everyday.”
And regarding when he feels he will be satisfied with his work. “An artist can never be satisfied, once he is satisfied, he is finished.”

Published in Hindustan Times Next on February 3, 2005