Small Town, Big Dreams

For actor Kartik Aaryan, the first challenge was to not let his small town allow his dreams to dissolve in the face of being too ambitious

- Ananya Ghosh

Scene: A small town somewhere in India. It is the '90s. The town's lone movie theatre is screening that month's hottest release, Baazigar. A boy sitting in the audience, flanked by his parents and sister, is mesmerised by the wicked charm of Vicky Malhotra, played by Shah Rukh Khan. He is not the only one. The entire nation is smitten by this dimpled hero. And like most kids his age, this boy wants to be SRK!

This could be the plot of a slice-of-life movie, a by-product of Bollywood's recent dalliance with heartland India. But our story is about Kartik Aaryan, the hero of his own Bollywood heartland story.

"We are a family of movie buffs. With my parents and my sister, I would always watch new releases at theatres or movies on television. I was so much in love with that world that I desperately wanted to be a part of it. It started with the dream to become a hero," recalls Kartik, the actor who has been catapulted into the league of A-list stars since the humongous box office success of his latest release, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2. Growing up in Gwalior, his is every bit of a small-town success story that Bollywood celebrates today.

MAN WITH A PLAN

For a boy from a simple middle-class family in Madhya Pradesh, conquering Mumbai was too distant a dream, one that couldn't be articulated even to his parents. "It was so far-fetched for a boy growing up in a town like ours that nobody would have believed me even if I told them. It was not a plausible career option at all. Nobody in my school or at my home had an inkling that I wanted to take this path," says Kartik, whose doctor parents' dream was to see their son become a doctor or an engineer.