AT THE INAUGURATION of the Apeejay Literary Festival in Kolkata this January, as visitors flitted around keynote speaker Shyam Benegal, festival director Maina Bhagat took her 49-year-old son across to say hello to the filmmaker. “You haven’t changed at all, sir,” said Nikhil Bhagat, a wide, boyish smile peeling years off his face. Trim and youthful-looking, Bhagat himself hadn’t changed all that much since 1985, when he played a small but important part in one of Benegal’s finest films, Trikal.
Bhagat’s star had shone briefly in the firmament of 1980s parallel cinema. His only other feature film appearance had been in 1984, in Prakash Jha’s Hip Hip Hurray, as the rebellious football player Raghu, locking horns with a discipline-seeking sports coach. But an entry on the Times of India blog notes that he “induced nationwide hysterical squeals from pretty young things” after that film. Aged just 20, he was nominated for a Filmfare award for best supporting actor, losing to the more experienced Anil Kapoor. Today, it is difficult to find a photo of Bhagat online.
Having coincidentally watched both films recently, and perhaps swayed by filmi narratives myself, I had wondered if there was a tragic story behind his disappearance from the industry. But these notions dissolved that evening in Kolkata. Bhagat, still strikingly handsome, seemed very comfortable in his own skin. Speaking with him then, and on the phone later, I got the impression he was unused to being interviewed, and that his movie career had been more a result of chance than a deep desire to be in the spotlight.
Bhagat had been studying in St Xavier’s College in Kolkata in 1983, when Jha made a hurried trip to the city to scout for a good-looking, athletic youngster. The college put up a notice, and the 19-year-old went for the audition with a few hundred others, though he nearly left after a while (“Who’s going to wait so long?”). But soon, he was on a shortlist of three—and then Jha was telling him to pack his bags for the shoot in Ranchi.
He spoke very little Hindi and his voice would be dubbed over, but Jha had seen in him a combination of vulnerability and rugged insolence that would suit Raghu well. After Benegal saw Hip Hip Hurray, he cast Bhagat in Trikal. (He later also made a brief appearance in Benegal’s TV series Yatra.) It would be overstatement to say that those films reveal a brilliant performer. What they do show is a callow young man, raw with his dialogue delivery and expressions, but with definite screen presence—someone who might, with experience and nurturing, have gone on to establish himself firmly in the industry.
Bhagat himself is touchingly ingenuous when he discusses acting. He couldn’t relate to Raghu, he said, but having watched movies like To Sir, with Love, he was familiar with the character type. As for Trikal, he had never serenaded, or sung a plaintive lament for, a girl himself, “but at that age one has experience of raging hormones”; so he lip-synched through a memorable little scene in the film, where Remo Fernandes strums a guitar next to him while Maqsood Ali—later famous as Lucky Ali—watches from a distance. It is a poignant image, with hindsight, of three young people with very different futures in the entertainment business.
His closest brush with the experience of being a celebrity came when Hip Hip Hurray released in Kolkata, and word spread that he was in the hall. “The crowd became unruly and I sat in the manager’s office until they dispersed,” he recalled. That incident apart, the St Xavier’s boy lived in a world far removed from the Mumbai film industry, and he seems nonchalant even about his Filmfare nomination. “I was aware of it, but there was no real question of going to Bombay.” He had college to finish, he explained.
After graduating, Bhagat did make a trip to Mumbai to try his luck with films, but realised quickly that he was not passionate about acting or stardom. “I am a private person, and wouldn’t push myself beyond a point,” he said. Besides, the divide between mainstream and non-mainstream cinema was sharper then: having a Trikal on his resume wasn’t going to get him auditions. There were missed opportunities too. Ketan Mehta called him for an interview for Holi—the film that would mark the professional debut of a youngster named Aamir Khan—but Bhagat couldn’t go because floods in Kolkata that year made travel impossible for five crucial days.
For 25 years now Bhagat has worked in leather exports—he is now director of a leather goods company—and says that while life has had its ups and downs, “as in any business”, he has no regrets. “How many people become film stars anyway?” he said. “And those who do often end up living in golden cages, without the freedom to be normal people.”