‘Taimur loves the Ramayan'

‘He is not interested in cricket or football.’ ‘He is interested in singing, dancing and painting.’ ‘Right now, he thinks he’s Lord Rama.’

“I remember at 17-18, I was a mess. Acting saved me from self-destruction,” Saif Ali Khan tells Subhash K Jha, as he looks back at his long career, the awards culture in Bollywood and his children, Sara, Ibrahim and Taimur.Saif also discusses his relationship with wife Kareena Kapoor, saying, “We can be in the same room and be on different planets.”

How is the lockdown treating you and Kareena?

Well, so far so good.

We are all learning to cope with the new normal. Our son Taimur is the sunshine that keeps our home radiant and now, he has a sibling on the way.

Do you think things will ever be the same again?

They are not the same as they used to be. But yes, I do feel they will be the same again at some point, though at the moment we don’t know when that would be.

I have to admit there’s still a fear to go out to work. I am just hopeful that soon a lot of us will be asymptomatic so that we can work in a more relaxed atmosphere.

Would you be comfortable doing an intimate scene?

Well, yes, sure. Relatively, a one-to-one is safer -- of course, you think 10 times before doing it -- than a crowded song-and-dance sequence with 500 chorus dancers. That’s what I have to go back to.

That’s what I’ve got pending in Yash Raj Films’s Bunty Aur Babli and what the four of us (Saif, Rani Mukerji, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Sharvari Wagh) have to go back to.

It’s scary.

It’s a crowded dance number with chorus dancers, etc.

Can’t they drop it?