A star is born!

It was a Chachi 420 situation Adarsh Gourav 26 recalls of the time hersquod checked himself into a highend hotel in Saket in South Delhi In the morning hersquod step out wearing clothes similar to his character Balram Halwai from The White Tiger At night hersquod go out shoppingsocialising to the mall nearby as GouravSensing something fishy sundry hotel staff would follow him to his room from a distance ldquoTo fuel the suspenserdquo Gourav had instructed that no housekeeping staff be allowed inThe night before he checked out the hotel staff entered his space and were quite ldquoscaredrdquo to see chart papers and pictures of Priyanka Chopra Jonas Rajkummar Rao Mahesh Manjrekar lying all overThey were convinced he was a contract killer ldquoI was just fooling around with themrdquo Gourav says revealing a naturally cheeky personality that merges so seamlessly as he slips into Balram in Ramin Bahranirsquos film as wellBut what was he really up to during the day anyway Working at a lsquoredirsquo mdash a roadside teapakoda type stall in the neighbourhood To get a hang of a person from the underclass engaged in a menial job mdash in the existing world that he wants to desperately exit fromIt took Gourav a few days to find this pakoda job because hersquod introduce himself as Balram to his potential masters And theyrsquod want to see his identity card before hiringA Good Samaritan did have him on board which is how he got ldquoR100 a day to clean utensils by the gutter with bandicoots running all over I was just thinking what am I doing here I needed to get the hell outrdquo Gourav laughsWhich is essentially Balramrsquos life in his village before he becomes the driver in the city both in Aravind Adigarsquos Bookerwinning angry novel set in Delhi in the late noughties and the IranianAmerican Bahranirsquos realistic adaptation that dropped globally on Netflix on January 22Gourav also spent a couple of weeks in a village called Charkhari Basti in Jharkhand where Balram is roughly from befriending a family mdash living among them anonymously to simultaneously relive his characterrsquos backstory ldquoMy biggest high of being an actor is the preparation time Thatrsquos where I have real fun I got three and half months for BalramrdquoGourav is himself from Jamshedpur the steel township in Jharkhand that in terms of childhood years he also shares with Priyanka Chopra his coactor and coproducer on White Tiger In eighth grade he moved to Mumbai with his parents given his fatherrsquos transferable jobOne of the reasons for this move he reveals was his talent for Hindustani classical music Hersquos a trained vocalist His family felt the city would offer him better opportunities to pursue music as a formal careerIt was during his performance at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai that someone from the audience checked if he might be interested in acting As a teenager he was ldquothrilledrdquo at the prospect of being on TV The gentleman asked him to meet with his portfolio He came over with passportsized photos to the casting office as if applying for an Aadhar cardldquoThey were like what are we going to do with this And so I went to Studio 19 in Juhu paid Rs 3000 to get my portfolio shotrdquo This helped Gourav land his first role on screen as the younger version of Shah Rukh Khan in Karan Joharrsquos My Name is Khan 2010On each day of his threeday shoot different members of his family would troop in to the set to gawk awestruck by how movies are made mdash ldquoKaran Johar looks taller in real liferdquo mdash knowing that this was a oneoff opportunity for young GouravOnly in 2013 did he take up acting seriously as a profession circling around Mumbairsquos audition subculture mdash testing for parts in ads and films doing roles of varying lengths After several fallow months in 2019 by the time Gourav was finalised for his dream lead debut with The White Tiger his costar Rajkummar Rao knew of him as a talent of sorts from roles in Mom 2017 Rukh 2017 and SRK JrldquoHis commitment inspired me a lotrdquo Rao says delving on how much of the gritty movie is an outcome of both of them jamming and the director Bahrani ldquotaking his actors to a point that they start living in the momentrdquoThe White Tiger opened to rave reviews especially for Gourav first in the US where it had a limited theatrical release with multiple allusions made to Bong Joonhorsquos Parasite 2019 and Danny Boylersquos Slumdog Millionaire 2008 This serves as good omen for an Oscar considerationldquoIrsquod be lying if I told you we hadnrsquot thought of that global stage with an Academy nomrdquo says producer Mukul Deora whorsquos had the rights to Adigarsquos book for a decade Adigarsquos 2008 book in turn is dedicated to Bahrani himself They were close friends and roommates at Columbia University Between Bahrani whorsquos read multiple drafts of the novel and I mdash wersquove been with White Tiger for quarter of a centuryrdquo Deora saysTo quote a dialogue from the film White Tiger is basically about how ldquothere are only two castes in India upper and lower For the poor only two ways to get to the top crime and politicsrdquo As true for SlumdogAlthough if and when Tigergt Slumdog itrsquos because Gourav gt Dev Patel Infinitely so Because Gourav is basically Balram as he realised offscreen in Delhi when a minitruck driver randomly outside the same Saket hotel asked him to lift construction material from the boot once for ldquoRs 20 chai paniHaving cracked one half of the syllabus the backstory the toughest nut according to Gourav was playing the Bangalore version of his character who becomes rich and successfulldquoI literally played it by the book In the evenings at the hotel I would read multiple textbooks on body language posture how to sit appear confident be alpha in a roomrdquo Guessing Balram from The White Tiger also wouldrsquove gone through the same unlearning