Suniel Shetty’s naxal act

How was it winning a best actor award for your movie on naxalites?
I was aware that Red Alert-The War Within was selected for the competition section of the South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF). But when THE producer (Rahul Aggarwal) and the director (Ananth Mahadevan) called me up in the wee hours telling me that I had won the best actor’s award at SAIFF, I thought they were playing a prank. Frankly it did take some time to sink in. It was a best actor award, that too at an international fete! I did feel elated and simultaneously felt the responsibility it meant for the future. It m,eant I had to take more care in selection of roles and their execution.

How did you prepare for the role of a naxalite?
It meant turning myself inside out. Suniel Shetty —  the macho man — had to be replaced with a broken, frightened, hapless farmer image. So I set out to break my body language completely, droop my shoulders, give my eyes a lost, wandering look and projected an unkempt face that changed the perspective completely.

The Suniel Shetty you know is the one who is adept at picking up the gun. In Red Alert, he doesn’t even know how to hold one. Ananth’s reference of the naive Dith Pran character in Roland Jaffe’s Killing Fields also helped. Together we constructed Narasimha, the farmer and killed Suniel Shetty, the macho man.

What is your take on the naxals?
The problem isn’t as simple as black and white. These are people who have been deprived and exploited; their mineral ore seized and their existence threatened. Now the violence has assumed alarming proportions. They are our own people, not terrorists. Hence the dilemma is greater! When your own house is not in order, how do you expect to survive? Violence begets violence and the country now bleeds in an area called the Red Belt. The government has its task cut out. But the solution isn’t there for the asking. We have tied ourselves up in such knots that if you remove one, another tightens.