Ajay Gehi lived in mud houses, learnt a new language and slept on stone beds to feel the essence of his film. He chatted with I Kaur
Mud houses, meals in kulhars and earthen thalis, extreme desert conditions in Kutch — the cast and crew of The Good Road braved it all to get into the skin of their characters. For actor Ajay Gehi it was a great way of putting him into the characteristic mould. “When I took up the film, I was clueless about Gujarat’s environment, language, culture and society. Though I had trained for over two months for the character, something was still missing and that was the feel of the character. This I got once we reached the sets. Due to some budget constrains we had to put up in huts made of mud. Even the beds we slept on were stone hard. It brought us out of our comfort zone and made us realise how hard can be life,” he said.
Born and brought up in Mumbai, the only two languages Gehi knew well was English and Hindi. This turned out to be his biggest challenge through the film. “The language was absolutely alien to me. The first criterion was to learn the language from scratch to finish so that the acting comes naturally. For over two months I was like a 12-year-old with my notebook learning the language and getting the accent right. People would come and sit with me for hours till I got the dialogues right. At that time it didn’t matter how I acted, it was about understanding the nuances of the language. Once you get the language right things fall in place automatically. If it was an urban Gujarati family in Mumbai, we could’ve gotten away with slangs, but not here. Everything needed to be perfect here,” he shared.
Gehi plays the character of David who is a photographer. “He is a very creative person who thinks from his heart and makes jokes about life. He isn’t money minded and happiness is more important to him than anything else, because of which he is not very successful. The story begins with his son’s vacations, when he decides to go on a family road trip,” he explained.
Though the film has now been submitted as the official entry for Oscars and won the National Award, Gehi had very low expectations from the film at first. He elaborated, “Unfortunately in our industry when you don’t have big names attached to the film, you can’t expect anything out of it. Also, it was a regional film which kept us wondering whether the film will release also or not. In fact, once it got a national release, we were all thrilled and the National Award was a surprise. But the last thing which we hadn’t even dreamt of was the Oscars. I think we are still trying to digest it.”
In spite of the low expectancy from the film, Gehi went ahead and did the film because of his artistic instinct. He said, “I did it because it touched me and as an artiste I wanted to be a part of it. Sometimes we do films to hone our talents. I think this project for me was a platform where I could work on my skills.”
At present he has no future projects lined-up. However, he said that he is looking for one. “I don’t categorise films as an art or commercial film — every film is made with the motive of making money. For me there are two kinds of films — ones that work and those that don’t,” he added.