Anupam Kher - The Best Thing about You Is You!

THE BEST THING ABOUT YOU IS
YOU!

Hay House Publishers (India) Pvt. Ltd.
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Copyright Anupam Kher, 2012
Photographs in by Noni Chawla
Photographs in by Ashok Chopra
Photographs in by Taarini Chopra
Photographs in , postscript, acknowledgements by Raghav Khattar
Photograph in by Jesse Robertson
Photographs in by Prem Kumar Singh

Email: contact@hayhouse.co.in

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The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and the facts are as reported by him, verified to the extent possible. The publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

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Designed by Aeshna Roy at Hay House India

ISBN 9789381431177

Printed and bound at
Thomson Press (India) Ltd., Faridabad

To
my grandfather

Pandit Amar Nath

who taught me
Bheega hua aadmi baarish se nahin darta.
(A man who is drenched is not afraid of the rain.)

Contents

A S AN ACTOR WITH OVER 450 FILMS IN MY REPERTOIRE, IT HAS been my privilege to travel the world and meet several hundreds of people engaged in a wide spectrum of endeavours: From presidents to commoners; from billionaires to paupers. For me, this is not a privilege to be taken lightly as I enjoy meeting people. I also find it a very stimulating exercise to analyse them.

Actually, I find that I have a gift of analysing people. As I talk to them, I sometimes wonder what kind of lives they must be leading, what kinds of backgrounds they come from, the families they have raised and what makes them tick. Certainly, my calling as a trained actor has helped hone this process as understanding your character and getting under his skin makes your portrayal more convincing.

But for me, it has not stopped at analysing others. I have constantly tried to analyse myself and reinvent myself. You cannot be emoting the same way as, say, a father, in 50 films. You have to be different and reinvent yourself. And that process begins only when you rediscover yourself.

That process of rediscovery for me began when I was contemplating my one-man play Kuchh Bhi Ho Sakta Hai (anything can happen) some years ago. Here I was, a very successful actor if you count the number of films I had done. And judging from the critical acclaim and the awards that I have won, I was not doing too bad a job of it either.

For a boy who had grown up in the family of a lower division clerk in Shimla with dreams for company, I had achieved fame and fortune beyond my wildest imagination. And then, like it happens to most of us, the dreams got the better of me. I thought I had the Midas touch and nothing could go wrong. As was the fashion a decade ago, I too set up a huge production house to make software for the industry.

Initially, I had the most successful television programmes in my kitty. Not satisfied, I diversified even further. I went into event management, for that was the latest business to be in during those days, and staged many mega-events.

The cookie crumbled as it had to. Soon, with so many productions and events, and poor financial management, which is the bane of our business, the cash flow went kaput. And I was fighting a flurry of court cases from creditors. That was when I discovered myself and began to do some self-therapy. I asked myself:

Why did I want to become larger than life?

What was I in pursuit of? Wealth or happiness? Or just a larger headline than my rival production company?

In the process, I discovered many truths. And I formulated many exercises, which I introduced in my acting school called Actor Prepares. (I started this school in 2005 in Mumbai.) Today, Actor Prepares is also running in Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and London. It teaches people to discover themselves.

That was how I formulated The Change Within concept. In this volume I discuss some facets of this life-coaching programme. The purpose of my writing this small book is to initiate change for the better in our lives.

Anupam Kher

There is much talk of shopping endlessly to uplift your mood;
retail therapy is the new phrase. Or the new world of cosmetic enhancement
to give you magically good looks. Sadly, the highs of these therapies
get dissipated in a short while leaving you as depressed as you were initially.

I N HIS CLASSIC WORK ANNA KARENINA, THE GREAT RUSSIAN mystic and novelist Leo Tolstoy writes: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Yes, it is a truism that no one is happy. We are all unhappy, but in varying degrees. The seeming roots of our unhappiness stem from many perceived failings: failed relationships; failure to have offspring; failure to have enough resources; and lack of good looks. There could be a million reasons.

You would have noticed that I have used the word perceived. That is because these attributes are not really our failings. We perceive them as failings from the standpoint of others. I will touch upon the effects of such a perception later. Here I wish to discuss the underlying and widely held belief that having enough money would vaporize all our failures. Unfortunately, this is not so.

It is not that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are the happiest persons on this planet. Gates and Buffet may not lose sleep over where their next meal will come from, but like other mortals, they too are plagued with concerns about their children, personal relationships and numerous other matters. They are also worried stiff about protecting their monumental reputations. Because when you are number one in your field, there is no place else to go. You have to keep fighting all the time just to stay in place, where you are, with a pack of rivals working overtime to overtake you. Closer home, Im sure its the same with Ratan Tata or with Mukesh Ambani and his younger brother Anil.

I recall that way back in the 1980s the listings of the richest people on the planet was routinely topped by the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah. Even today the web is replete with pictures of his gold-plated Boeing 747, his gilded 1178-room palace and the largest collection of luxury and high-performance cars.

But the main question is: Is he happy? No. His brother Jefri Bolkiah gypped him of 15 billion dollars, and many more billions were lost in bad business deals by the brother until the Sultan finally disowned him.