All For Love Series - Part II

All For Love Series - Part II

Of Pouts, Poses And A Passion!

Part II of our series features diehard romantic Atul Kasbekar, who turned his childhood passion into a successful proposition. He lives most of his life behind the camera, flirting with the world and its 'It' people through its aperture. In a freewheeling conversation with Shraddha Jahagirdar-Saxena, he speaks about the picture-perfect romances that have dominated his professional and personal life
Watch him at work and it is easy to see why he is so passionate about his art. But to call him passionate about people, places...things and brands is to put it mildly. The dominant amour in his life - professionally speaking - is governed by what one may term his sixth sense, the camera, through which he often views the world and its well-known denizens, taking romance to a different dimension altogether.
In the wake of 3 Idiots, 44-year-old Kasbekar laughingly points out that the wannabe engineer-turned-photographer could just as well have been him. For the real-life middle-class Brahmin morphed his childhood passion into a full-time profession. He reiterates, "My story is Madhavan's story. As a child I would take pictures of my sister, my friends, my dog...anything and anyone I could shoot. That was my first genuine love affair. I remembered a famous saying that 95 per cent of humanity goes to work; only five per cent enjoys what they do. So, despite getting very good grades and admission to Mumbai's prestigious UDCT, I chucked it up to follow my dream. I was clear which side of the percentage I wanted to be."

His passion is evident in the area he calls workplace. The place that has launched umpteen faces and campaigns has many of them on its walls, literally. Ask him what still turns him on about his work and he replies, "I was shooting almost everything, till I realised that people photography excites me."

It is not easy getting subjects who have never faced a camera before or those who may be having a bad day to relax and give off their best profile. But that is exactly what Kasbekar says he is a 'world champion' at doing. The man who self-confessedly hates moving in front of a camera, says, "It does not take me very long to suss out what the other person wants. Then you have to be a chameleon and wear different hats - you could be their best friend, a listener...or just keep your mouth shut. At that point of time you have to make them feel the most important person in the world. You have to be a people's person to be a people's photographer and encourage them to flirt with the camera."

In his opinion, it is most important for the man behind the camera to create the right mood so that the subject can set his own equation with the camera. For him that is the romance of it all - the fact that 'no two days are alike'. So whether it is an Aishwarya Rai, a Sachin Tendulkar, a MS Dhoni, a Mukesh Ambani or a Ratan Tata, shooting with each on separate and several occasions has its own element of romance and intrigue. "You shoot with someone even a 100 times and the 101st time will be different," says the seasoned 'campaigner'. "They may have gained weight, they may have lost weight, they may be looking better or worse, they may be having a personal crisis; they may be in the best personal space of their lives.... Every day, every person is different. I have the attention span of a grasshopper. There has to be something interesting about somebody for them to intrigue me."

And, believe it or not, but rarely do his subjects want to talk about themselves. It is not a narcissistic world that these icons who inspire romance, adulation and love in their fans that they inhabit while shooting with Kasbekar. "If I am shooting a cricketer, I will not speak cricket unless he wants to. Or if it is an actor in front of my lens, at most, I will compliment him/her on the last performance. And as far as the stars are concerned, it generally helps to set the zone because I am Zen calm while shooting," Kasbekar laughs. "I am not a screaming nutcase. No one needs the captain of the ship to have a panic attack. The Titanic is sinking, no problem, bring on the lifeboats, women and children first and we will all die. You keep a straight face while saying that. What I do is indulge in a lot of conversation, offer coffee.... And in between, I take pictures. There is something about everyone that can be tapped. Someone like Shah Rukh (Khan) can talk about anything. He is knowledgeable and can be hysterically funny about sport, films, politics, gossip...."

He sees romance in different ways in different people. It could be in the pout of a pretty actress or it could be in the passion that an MF Husain exhibits for his work. Recalling an encounter he had with the legendary artist in Dubai, Kasbekar says, "There is such an unbridled passion and joy in Husain, a constant process of reinvention that is crucial for an artist. With the work he has in mind, it is almost as if he has mapped out his life for the next 10 years. No one told him he is 90 plus. Young artists would baulk at what he is planning to do but he is on a roll. He bought a Bugati - the most expensive production car ever made - got it from the showroom, broke down the door of his home and parked it in his living room. He is a hopeless romantic."

Considering the fact that a fair share of his work is centred on capturing the body beautiful, it would be quite easy to slip into the realm of the bawdy. Kasbekar points out that there is a thin line between being attractive and vulgar. From his point of view, "That comes from the girl's and your sensibilities. I can't draw that line for anybody. For a Taliban specialist, anything outside a burkha is not happening. But in a space like Kingfisher, over the last eight years we have proved that it is possible to make the female body a thing of beauty and not just a sex object. The girls facing the camera can always come up with a take-me-to-bed pout. I tone that down a lot in conversation. I want a look that makes me want to take her home to my mom as well, and not just to her mom. I want a certain soft niceness in the eyes."

According to him the girl who shares the most romantic relationship with a camera is undoubtedly Malaika Arora Khan. She is by his description, to the camera born. "She is so fab," he states. "She will pout, bite her lip, wink. It is not me; it could be anyone behind the lens. She is simply making out with the camera. She comes alive at a photo shoot. This is how you work the camera."

On the other side, how Kasbekar works the camera is completely different. "Romancing the lens for me is a zone. There are some people you go into a zone with. It could be men or women. The rest of the world fades into nothingness. It is as if you are in a tunnel and you have an endorphin or adrenalin rush in your body. It is almost like the most powerful orgasm. It is almost like a drug...."

And he has his own share of crushes too, "I don't know why but I want to shoot Arundhati Roy. She is beautiful and intelligent. I like terribly opinionated people even if I do not agree with their opinions. I wish I had shot JRD Tata and Nani Palkhivala. Fabulously brainy persons are a turn on for me. Another person who inspires that sense in me is Meryl Streep. I see her name on credits and I will watch the movie. I don't care what genre it is or who else is in there."

For him, romance is all-consuming. It is something that makes time fly. He has had his fair share of sowing his wild oats in his growing up years. And yet, he remained a follower of his heart, something that led him to his wife, Vandana. "I am a complete romantic at heart," he states unabashedly. "I met my wife at a friend's party. I saw her across the room and knew that this was it. I spent the next year-and-a-half chasing here because she had heard many things about me and it took me a lot of time to convince her that this was a serious romance."

In an age of no mobiles and no virtual wooing, Kasbekar worked his way into Vandana's heart. "I would simply try to anticipate every possible wish of hers. So if she talked about some Eagles album, I would procure it that evening, record it on a tape and slip it into her bag the next day. I would go all the way from South Mumbai where I lived to Juhu by bus no 83 to drop her and return. I went off to the US to study photography for about four years but ran back every six months to keep the wolves of Mumbai at bay. Eventually she just gave me an 'E' for effort, gave up and gave in. Now we have been married for 19 years."

Vandana, a vital part of his work too, is the quieter of the two - for 'someone needs to listen'. Ask him how he would romance his wife today, and he replies, "What matters is the fact that I do things that are really important to her. She is the least bothered about gifts.... But if I volunteer - her calves or her lower back hurt after a long day - and go into massage mode or do things with the kids that would not otherwise be in my scope of activities that makes her smile a lot more than anything else would. We are both the same age and have been together since we were 19!"