On his birthday, actor Emraan Hashmi opened up about his chess champion son Ayaan, who is playing in international competitions. He also spoke on the claims levelled against him by Pakistani actor Javed Sheikh.
Emraan Hashmi is shooting for a project in Lucknow, which is still a secret, but the actor flew back to Mumbai on a late-night flight on Sunday to celebrate his birthday with his family, friends and fans who flock to his home to wish him on his special day.
“I am coming home for a day, I will take a 4 am flight on Tuesday and come back for the night shoot. Parveen (his wife) and Ayaan (son) are abroad, but my father is there,” he told while heading to the airport.
His teenage son is a chess champion whose passion and talent has seen him rise fast in the rankings. Ayan is participating in several international tournaments and is currently in Europe with his mother.
Imran says, “As parents, Parveen and I support him in this journey, not only because he loves the game, but also because the discipline of chess, the joy of winning and the sorrow of losing, are an invaluable experience for him in these early years.”
He admits that when it comes to chess, he is a novice and amateur compared to his son and needs to learn the game properly. “Ayaan has promised to teach me, but I haven’t got the time to sit down with him and learn.
So, right now he is way ahead and I have no chance,” laughs Emraan. He gives full credit to his wife for taking their son to classes, nurturing his talent and now travelling around the world with him. The actor himself has played a variety of sports including cricket and badminton.
While in college, he got hooked to snooker and recalls playing for about six hours a day at the club. “Then, when pool came to India in the late 90s, it became easier for snooker players like me. We used to go to pool parlours and win a lot of bets. It was fun, but as an 80s kid, I wasn’t as competitive as my son, I just used to have fun with friends,” he admits.
One knows him as an undoubtedly talented, but always quiet man, who seems far more sharp and driven as an actor. He admits as much, saying that though he still doesn’t make any New Year’s resolutions, the desire to do better as a professional and be more disciplined every day is there.
“Professionally, I still have the same curiosity that started in 2003. I want to do roles that scare me because the fear that I won’t be able to pull them off motivates me to push the boundaries,” he reasons.
He points out that in the first decade of the millennium, the Hindi film industry was also not very experimental and he might have played similar characters. But with the advent of OTT, young filmmakers are coming up with exciting, character-driven films.
He said, “Now, as an actor, there is a hunger to achieve something because you are doing something that you have done in 15 other films before. Our Hindi film industry may not be going through the best of times, but today there are a lot of filmmakers with new ideas that inspire me to explore different facets of myself as an actor.”
Emraan will next be seen in Excel Entertainment’s Ground Zero, which releases on April 25 and according to its makers, is inspired by the Border Security Force’s finest operation in 50 years. “I was blown away by the script. It is a chapter in the history of our national security and sums up the adage, truth is stranger than fiction.
My first reaction was, ‘Did this really happen and if it did, how is it that so many people don’t know about it?'” he recalled. He is also venturing into South cinema with the Telugu gangster thriller, OG, opposite Pawan Kalyan, and has also entered Adivi Sesh’s action-packed spy franchise with the sequel to the 2018 Telugu blockbuster Goodachari.
Talking about the eagerly-awaited cross-pollination of talents with superstars from other film industries, Emraan stressed that cinema is an amalgamation of ideas, different cultures and creative minds.
“The south film industry has its own audience, so do we. It’s good when Hindi film actors come into this world to create something new and unique. It results in a melting point of different worlds that creates a fresh cinematic experience,” says the actor, who has never shied away from experimenting himself, be it with films like Murder, Jannat, Awarapan or Shanghai at the start of his career.
Meanwhile, a controversy has erupted, with veteran Pakistani actor Javed Sheikh alleging that Emraan behaved very rudely, even rudely, with him when they first met at Newlands Cricket Stadium in South Africa.
Moreover, in an interview he has said that during the shooting of Jannat, in which Sheikh plays underworld don Abu Ibrahim, who draws Emraan’s character Arjun Dixit into his dark world of match-fixing, they didn’t talk to each other at all.
“That’s weird!” he said. He admitted that although he honestly doesn’t remember the first meeting as it happened so long ago, he remembers that he and Sheikh always had a cordial relationship. “I was 20 then, and he’s not my age, so we were never friends. I didn’t hang out with him, but I don’t remember anything like what he’s saying.”
He added that there was probably some misunderstanding. “I don’t know what Javed sahab took with him, but it’s definitely something he has kept for 16-17 years. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a big comedy of errors that has grown so big that I don’t know anything,” he concludes with a still-shocked laugh.
