Featured Actor: Sparsh Shrivastav for Jamtara

Thanks to actors like Sparsh Srivastav and Manish Chauhan, my perspective towards actors and acting has changed for life. Before I watched them perform and fell in love with their work, I used to watch movies or web series that had popular names associated with them. 

But then I watched Jamtara’s trailer. Trust me, I wasn’t planning to watch this series but I liked the plot. Since it was inspired by real events, I decided to give it a shot. Even when I put on the show, I wasn’t sure I would complete it. Reason? No popular faces. I guess that is why the industry does not give chance to newcomers. Thanks to people like me, there are always chances that good content would go unnoticed simply because we do not know its cast. 

With Jamtara: Sabka Number Aayega, the unimaginable happened. As the show progressed, I fell in love with this guy who so convincingly played Sunny in the series. The character had so many shades to it – from being a super confident mastermind of one the most intelligent crimes to a guy on the run who is scared for his and then his family’s life. From even marrying just to advance his business to falling in love with his wife and then protecting her before himself. At such a young age (Sparsh Shrivastav is just 20 something), the way he convinced the audience to feel for Sunny, and to feel every different emotion he was experiencing in different scenes is praise-worthy. It is applaudable. 

Being a criminal, the character cannot be called ‘relatable.’ In such a scenario, making your audience pity you, making them understand the character’s psychology and also his pitiful state for committing the crime and then again making them question the entire system requires a balanced, intelligent, and mature understanding of how to deliver a performance. Of course, it is not one man’s job. The equal credit goes to the Director, Soumendra Padhi along with the ensemble. When I speak of the cast, how can I not mention Monika Panwar and Anshuman Pushkar? They were equally good. Having said that, if Sparsh did not know his job well, no director or other actors could have helped him deliver such a brilliant performance. 

For me, Sparsh Srivastav will always be the guy from Jamtara who made me understand why it’s important to choose actors over celebs. It’s only when we, the audience start choosing actors over celebrities, the industry would start giving them the break that they deserve. When this starts happening, I am sure Bollywood will be unbeatable. With the talent that the Indian film industry has, if they start utilising it to the fullest, it can reach new heights overnight. 

I wonder if Bollywood is so popular even after giving repeated chances to people who don’t deserve them, where will Bollywood be if they start giving right breaks to talented newcomers.