WHEN Anupam Kher speaks, you feel expressions are hurriedly changing costume beneath his solemn, screen-like face. There is always suspense: which one would make the next appearance.

A tiny smile jumped forth this time. 

"After 50 years, I will be happy if I'm known more as an educationist than an actor," the 53-year-old actor said in a relaxed chat with MiD DAY on Sunday, a day after receiving the prestigious Teacher Achievement Award in Delhi along with Lalit Modi, the man behind the Indian Premier League, and Abhinav Bindra, Olympic gold medalist, among others. 

It is perhaps karmic that the actor who arrived burning Bollywood's dainty gates down in the role of the angry, idealistic teacher in the 1984 film Saraansh should want to be remembered as just that: a teacher.

Kher, despite the recent success of A Wednesday, seemed a man looking beyond the smokescreen of the moment, settling for a quietly personal glory away from the heat of hits and flops.

His acting school in Mumbai has produced talent like Deepika Padukone, and he called the opening of the London chapter of the school his "best moment by far".

"I had dreamt of a lot of things and achieved them, but this was something I had not even dreamt of: that a small boy from Shimla will one day have an acting school in London," he said, sitting in the lobby of a five-star hotel lobby in south-central Delhi.

He has acting schools in Mumbai, Chandigarh and London, and one is coming up in Ahmedabad.

"Next stop New York. I am looking for a good partner to open classes there," said Kher, looking fresh from an evening jog in a dark track suit.

 "You learn so much as you teach acting. There is no syllabus. Whosoever can lie, can act."

Sitting beside him, adman and friend from his days as a Bollywood struggler Aditya Arya talked about their days as lodgers at Bandra's Casa Maria, where they paid Rs 800 a month as rent in the early '80s.

The mansion had slipped into ruins, but one of India's finest actors remained in Arya's memory as a teacher by passion.

"He spoke like one, had the strong aura of one," Arya reminisced.

Kher, the veteran of 362 films and counting, is now looking for a script to make a movie. He is open to ideas from anybody.

"I am itching to make a film with an interesting script," he said.

But as a teacher and father, is he disappointed with the lukewarm debut of son Sikander?

"Why should I be? Sikander is very talented. He will shine when the right movie comes along," he said. "I would be disappointed if he were a bad actor and still his films did well."

Towards the end of the interview, Kher stepped out for a cigarette. The old habit has re-appeared from a long exile, and the teacher has come full circle.