Silver for SoBo’s Bomzi in Bollywood!

Boman Irani in ‘Everybody Says I’m Fine!’ (2001) and the recently released ‘Peddi’

I distinctly remember, the first time I met actor Boman Irani was on a flight, exclusively with Bollywood blokes, returning from an awards night in Dubai.

The inflight entertainment had a popular trivia/quiz game, with enough passengers, anonymously, playing against each other, using aliases.

The leaderboard furiously alternated between me and two others, constantly slipping/moving up the top spot. At some point, I could resist no more. I got up from my seat, announced/wondered aloud - who are these other two? One was (singer) Shaan. The other, Boman! This is circa 2003.

Unsure if it was at the same award show, but I vaguely recall Boman receiving the ‘best villain' trophy around then, with the film industry in audience, where he urged along the lines of: "You may think otherwise - but I'm a hardcore Bollywood guy."

Was that the challenge, initially, I ask Boman. He admits, "I found it a little offensive, when producers/directors would turn around to tell me that they're ‘filmy people'.

"Who're you saying this to? Just because you've made up your mind that I'm a Parsee, from South Bombay? You wanna talk Hindi films - from which generation? I'm very filmy; pretty much an encyclopedia!"

In 2026, Boman, 66, wraps up 25 years in films. "I wasn't aware," he says. Neither was I, until invited to host a conversation with him, before a live audience, on the said topic.

The reference is to Rahul Bose's Everybody Says I'm Fine! that premiered in 2001. I always think of Ram Madhvani's Let's Talk (2002) as his dramatic, dream debut. Boman says he wasn't nervous on either film. They were primarily English language productions. He'd done "theatre for 12-odd years, already."

It's his first day on the sets of Raju Hirani's Munnabhai MBBS (2003) that felt so traumatic, though, that he ended it with handing in his resignation to the director! Both cried. Raju pressed him to stay on.

The way it went was this: "It was also the first day for Sunil Dutt, facing the camera, after 16 years. Dutt Saab had never been in a vanity van before - they didn't exist in his time!" Boman was dressed as geriatric Dr Asthana: "Dutt Saab assumed I was older than him, and confessed he was feeling nervous."

In the scene, Asthana lets out his lunatic laugh (the character's tic): "Dutt Saab wasn't told about this, and he looked nonplussed. I also felt I wasn't doing a good job."

Munnabhai became Boman's ticket to Bollywood, aged 44. He was still a photographer then, having turned it into a profession at 33; performing on stage (I'm Not Bajirao), alongside. He was, famously, a waiter at the Taj, Colaba, once. Boman's gone way past 100 films since a belated debut.

Self-admittedly, his toughest onscreen role remains the ‘kameena' Kishan Khanna from Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006), directed by Dibakar Banerjee, written by Jaideep Sahni - "both Delhi boys. It's one thing to [master] the accent, and body-language. But what about that milieu?"

Boman had first declined that part. He recently returned to the role, for its sequel, and found it tougher still: "It's been 20 years; you've moved on."

On the Khosla Ka Ghosla set, Boman enlisted the help of a Delhi-Punjabi actor, who had trolled him, instead, for bagging the part that naturally belonged to him.

Curiously, a great role Boman missed out on, over dates not matching, was also a Delhiite's! Trivia: Who was the original choice for Annu Kapoor's character in Shoojit Sircar's Vicky Donor (2012)?

Boman says he learnt cinema, at the cinemas, "living, working in Bombay's theatre district".

As he geographically explains, his family wafer-shop, in South Bombay, shared the wall with Novelty cinema, "behind which was Apsara; next to Minerva, where Sholay ran for five years; little ahead, Maratha Mandir, where DDLJ's still running. Down the road, Super, opposite Shalimar, and the Lamington Road ‘trimurti': Swastik, Imperial, Naaz!"

He watched a movie every night. He went over to New York, however, to learn screenwriting, in his 60s - debuting as director at 65 (The Mehta Boys).

Before we get on stage for the Bollywood (Hungama) event, he tells me, teaching screenwriting, through his cohort, Spiral Bound, is currently his "life's mission." He's held 875 sessions, already.

Is age simply a number, then? I ask Boman. Physically? "No." Mentally? "Yes." He laughs, "When Abhishek (Bachchan) is asked, who's the toughest to play FIFA on PlayStation against? He says my name - that's it!"

For life's lesson, Boman says he follows his mom's: "Remain occupied." And that's how you never "have time to pamper a fall, or fever!"

All he wants to know is - his "next piece of creation, next holiday, sporting event…" And that's also how Boman words his autographs: "To, what's next…"

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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