Vivaan Shah said it was a blessing to portray a real-life character like Captain Vijendra Malhotra in filmmaker Sriram Raghavan’s war drama ‘Ikkis’ and a significant part of his performance was inspired by his uncle, retired Lieutenant General Zameeruddin Shah.
In the critically acclaimed war drama, which centres on India’s youngest Param Vir Chakra awardee Arun Khetrapal, who was martyred during the 1971 Indo-Pak war, Shah played his sharp and composed senior officer, Captain Malhotra. His performance has been lauded for offering a counterpoint to Khetrapal’s raw intensity as a battle-ready greenhorn officer.
Shah, son of veteran actors Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah, said he has always been enamoured by his uncle’s dynamic and formidable personality.
“I based the character, a great deal of it, on my father’s older brother, Lieutenant General Zameeruddin Shah, who actually fought in the Battle of Longewala. He’s a very dynamic personality. And I really sort of drew on that a great deal and also from the real-life Captain Vijendra Malhotra, who himself was an extraordinarily charismatic person. I never, of course, got to meet him, unfortunately. But I studied his photographs and the information available,” Shah told PTI in an interview.
The film, which recently started streaming on ‘Prime Video’ following its release in theatres in January, features Agastya Nanda, Dharmendra and Jaideep Ahlawat.
The actor said that while he tried his best to authentically depict Malhotra in a ‘truthful and honest’ manner, a lot of it required him to fill in with his imagination. “This is the first time I’ve really got to play a really dynamic, smart and cool figure. And that, for me, was a real blessing. That was one of the great joys of playing Captain Vijay Malhotra,” he said.
The film will always hold a special place in his filmography as it marks his first collaboration with Sriram Raghavan, a filmmaker he has long admired.
Yet the experience also comes with a regret: the actor couldn’t meet Dharmendra, his father’s favourite hero, who passed away at the age of 89 in November last year.
In the film, Dharmendra portrays Khetarpal’s father, retired Brigadier Madan Lal Khetarpal, who, years after his son’s death, travels to Pakistan to visit his ancestral village in Sargodha.
“Our storylines didn’t intersect. They almost took place in two parallel timelines, in a sense. And it’s one of the great regrets of my life that I didn’t get to meet Dharmendra ji, who’s one of my heroes and who’s also a hero for my father because my father grew up watching his films in the early 60s, from ‘Haqeeqat’ and ‘Phool Aur Pathar’ to so many of the wonderful films in the early 60s. Dharmendra ji, to my father, was really a sort of Herculean figure, a screen idol, as it were,” Shah said.