That Jaffna Spook

Filmography

• Airlift 2016 Hindi Belawadi’s George Kutty is exasperating yet endearing. He is the thorn at hero Akshay Kumar’s side, as he insists “paperwork is highly important”. As Belawadi puts it, “George Kutty is right, and that’s the problem with him.”

• Wazir 2016 Hindi A tiny role, but it’s a Amitabh Bachchan-starrer. Belawadi plays a DCP, another boss who is a stickler for standard operating procedures.

• Kendasampige 2015 Kannada DCP Suryakanth has very few dialogues and he appears only in a few scenes. But his is the foreboding presence because he’s a bad cop. And, there’s an innocent couple on the run. A sequel of the movie is on the cards.

• Madras Cafe 2013 Hindi The nuanced role of the drunk Indian intelligence officer stationed in Jaffna, who in the end turns out to be the main villain, propelled Belawadi to national stardom.

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Prakash Belawadi is waiting for a vehicle at Bangalore’s Ashoka Pillar when a young couple stops by for a selfie with him. Does that happen often? “After Airlift, it’s like an epide­mic, it’s a big film,” says the actor with a shock of grey hair who played the crabby George in the Bollywood movie. “I think these selfies will last another couple of days.” It’s nearing nine in the evening, just a few hours after Belaw­adi flew back into town from Mumbai after Airlift’s celebratory party (the film has made Rs 100 crore in ten days). Already, he’s managed to squeeze in an hour or so to rehearse an English play scheduled for an amateur theatre festival later in the week. Evidently, it’s something he enjoys. The Mumbai trips, meanwhile, have been getting a bit frequent of late and people have been asking him to shift there because many more film roles are coming his way. “Films have come a bit late in my career. I’m too invested in Bangalore,” says the 54-year-old.

Belawadi is well-known in Bangalore, both as a theatre-person and as a staunch Bangalorean, for he’s often spoken up as a concerned citizen. He reckons Bangalore is the second big theatre centre of India after Mumbai. “The brightest young people get engaged in theatre in Bangalore, that’s the advantage. They have the ability to write themselves,” he says. He’s also a political person—six years ago, he stood for elections to Bangalore’s city corporation from Sunkenahalli ward as a Lok Satta candidate and got 800-900 votes. He’s also part of a citizen’s initiative—Bangalore Political Action Committee—along with some of the city’s famous residents.

However, suddenly, Belawadi is beyond Bangalore. In recent months, he’s done a string of short roles in Bollywood films like Talvar and Wazir besides several Kannada films, notably Kendasampige and Aatagara, and the Kamalahaasan-starrer Uthama Villain in Tamil and won acclaim for his acting. The roles have all been small but a few have been key to the plot. Like the bent cop in Kendasampige. Or like George in Airlift, the man with the safari-suit, the slight hunch, the quick eyes and sharp tongue, forever embarrassing his wife with his outbursts. “You know, it’s the Indian middle-class man. Because you feel somehow the system will cheat you out of something. You want to get to the head of queue, you want to make the booking early. So he represents in a sense cynicism while the protagonist represents action,” says Belawadi as he breaks into a laugh. “There’s a little bit of George in every Indian.” Belawadi is no stranger to movies but the selfies first came by in 2013 when he played an alcoholic Indian intelligence chief stationed in Jaffna in the hit thriller Madras Cafe about the LTTE in Sri Lanka. It came his way when one of the director’s assistants who had worked with Belawadi suggested he try out for an interesting role. “For many people, all this is a surprise because Prakash has not really been a visible actor in that sense. For me, as someone who knows him well, it doesn’t come as a surprise. He’s a good actor with a fai­rly deep understanding of things because of his years in theatre,” says filmmaker Anand Subramanian, who worked with Belawadi on Doosra, a Hindi feature film the duo made a decade ago.

“Once I acted in Madras Cafe, I kept getting offers, mostly to act in ads. I’ve not acted in one yet though,” says Belawadi. However, he’s now appointed an agent in Mumbai because he’s getting calls more often these days for Bollywood movies. As for Kannada, he gets a couple of offers every week but he wants to be a bit choosy about them. Would he have liked to have started earlier? “I’m not an actor,” insists Belawadi who sees himself as having always been a backstage person, directing plays. But he reckons he’s been teaching acting for close to 30 years that it has become second nature to him. “The thing is, when that selfie thing comes, I don’t hang around for the next one to come because that’s not my life,” he says. While Belawadi has worn many hats, including that of a journalist, theatre has always been the first love.

He comes from a family of noted theatre personalities—his father Belawadi Nanjundaiah Narayana, for one, was popularly known as ‘Make-up Nani’; his parents too met on the backstage. Their house in Bangalore is named ‘The Green Room’. His two sisters have also acted in plays and television while his younger brother Pradeep is a line producer. Everybody in the next generation, including Prakash’s two daughters, one is a chartered accountant and the other an undergraduate student, have been involved in theatre as well.

Prakash has also done Kannada TV ­serials. “I’ve known Prakash since he was in his late teens and was understudy to his father Nani, who was an icon in Bangalore. From then on, he has graduated to not only being an actor, but a writer and a collaborator,” says noted theatre personality Jagdish Raja. Raja, who along with his wife Arundathi runs Jagriti theatre in Bangalore, says Prakash has been prolific, juggling many interests. There has of course been a struggle in the stalwart’s career, especially while making his first feature film Stumble (2002) which went on to win a national award. He borrowed money from friends and has not returned them all. He sold his house, his car, and shut down his company. He swore not to make films after that but made a second film, Doosra, nonet­heless. Now, Belawadi is thinking of directing a film again. “Now I’ve got lots of offers. But I’m out of practice, still a bit jittery, but I promise to ambush the world with a film this year,” he chuckles. Well, all the airlift to him.