POWER MOVES

After flirting with darker roles, Varun Dhawan is back to doing what he does best: playing the consummate Hindi film hero in feel-good entertainers that demolish the box office. Arun Janardhan meets the affable actor, bent on becoming Bollywood’s go-to Everyman

I am a random guy, a super random fellow,” is one of the ways Varun Dhawan describes himself. He uses the term “random” in a casual, throwaway manner that does not quantify it in any particular way. It merely means, in this case, that he may do things that do not conform to any set standard of human behaviour.

“I am pretty weird,” he adds, in case “random” didn’t cut it in describing his choice of activities.

Seated cross-legged on a footstool, dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and having come into the room with no footwear, as any random chap is likely to be in his own home, Dhawan explains what he means. He might be sitting with friends when a movie scene would come into his head and he’d start acting. Or, he’d be listening to music in his car and start to imagine how he’d dance to the song. His mind would wander through this retro number – a tune from the 1990s, a rap rage or Eminem’s protestations – and he would imagine himself in a vest and baggy jeans. “I wouldn’t realise, but I’d start moving. Then I’d see someone staring at me, or trying to take a picture. It gets so embarrassing…”

The 32-year-old actor is in a good place, he says, entering the new decade in a much better frame of mind than how 2019 started. He has a spate of films coming up, starting with Street Dancer 3D in January, Coolie No.1 in May, with possibly one or two more releases before the end of the year.