Angad Bedi, former cricket captain Bishan Singh Bedi's son looks for that big Bollywood break
Angad Bedi, former cricket captain Bishan Singh Bedi's son looks for that big Bollywood break
WHILE his father walked up to the crease, the son now prefers to walk down the catwalk. Angad Bedi son of former spinner and India cricket captain Bishan Singh Bedi was very visible in the just-concluded Fashion Weeks in New Delhi and in Mumbai.
Angad who has chucked cricket for the glamour world (though with the Indian Premier League IPL that gossamer fine line between glamour and the game may dissolve altogether) is hoping to springboard from ramp to celluloid.
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Says Angad, "I moved to Mumbai very recently. I live in Juhu (near the Juhu post office). I have to be here as I am looking for a break in commercial movies to work with people like Yash Chopra, Amol Gupte, Red Chillies Entertainment in lead roles."
Angad is now on a two-year contract with celebrity photographer Atul Kasbekar's 'Bling' company for film roles and endorsements and says, "Ask Atul about my endorsements and films." So when one does, Atul Kasbekar says, "Angad has a contract with us. In fact, he is doing a film for Popcorn Entertainment (Suneil Shetty's company) a portion of which has to be shot on a railway track. That will happen post-Lok Sabha elections. He has a few endorsements too, including with Raymonds. We've shot the print ads for the same. He has auditioned in several places."Kasbekar says referring to the Bling thing, "You know I met Angad at a party three years ago. At that time, he was built like a big, muscular bodybuilder, a real Airbus." I told him that lean would be in soon, if he wants to break into the glamour world that's the way to go." Then after six months I met him again. He came up to me and said: "Hi, you don't remember me?" I said no. It was Angad Bedi. It is so tough for a big person to get this lean. I thought to myself, if he can work so hard to transform his body like this... well, he's on. That's how Bling happened."
Angad laughs as he says, "I do a lot of cardio vascular work, go to the gym. Like all Punjabis I love my food. Though I do watch what I eat, I believe in not depriving the body of anything and working it all out. Working out comes naturally to me because of cricket."
Bowling may have come naturally to him because of his genes, but, father Bishan says Angad has paid for being a candid father's son. "Angad is working hard. I wish he worked half as hard on the cricket field. He would have played the Ranji Trophy. He was a very good cricketer. He suffered because he was my son. Not him, alone.
Sunil Joshi, Rahul Sanghvi and Murali Kathik, all suffered because I worked with them. But Angad being my son suffered the most. In the DDCA (Delhi and District Cricket Association) they couldn't have done much damage to me but they made it a point that, 'we won't let his son play.' On the cricketing front he got a bit disillusioned about suffering because he is Bishan Bedi's son," he says.
Angad says though more diplomatically that, "I used to play cricket but I always loved acting." Kasbekar says he is, "bullish" about Angad's future and, "Even Shah Rukh Khan was impressed by him when he met him backstage at a show. Shah Rukh has the highest regard for sportsmen and Bishan Bedi too."
While the Bishan Bedi name might work both ways turning the spotlight brighter on Angad and piling on the pressure, the young man is determined to make it. Maybe, a few years down the line Bishan Singh Bedi would be known as Angad Bedi's father rather than the other way around. Now, that would be a real 'turner' as they say in cricket's lexicon.
With inputs by Clayton Murzello
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