MUMBAI: Anupam Kher tours across USA for his first live show amid pandemic

MUMBAI: The show titled Zindagi Ka Safar
saw the actor playing his film clips, discussing books penned by him, sharing
philosophies he lives by and playing antakshari with the audience

A while
back, Anupam Kher flew to the USA to shoot for his upcoming project, Shiv
Shastri Balboa. On completion of the shoot, he decided to stay back and tour
across the cities of Dallas, Atlanta, San Jose, New Jersey, Washington and
Indianapolis for Zindagi Ka Safar which marks his first live show amid the
pandemic.

He says,
“When we were shooting in New Jersey, a lot of Indians would come to the shoot.
This pandemic has given us a strange sense of insecurity and uncertainty. Apart
from the fact that I’m actor who they’ve been watching, they wanted to talk to
me because they wanted some of reassurance about life.”

Kher’s
two-and-a-half hour long show in Dallas ran house full as the discussion with
his South Asian audience about first generation NRIs and generation gap struck
a chord with them: “I didn’t want to do a star night or a meet and greet
session or a regular play. I wanted to have a chat with them. I primarily spoke
about my life in Zindagi Ka Safar but people saw a glimpse of their lives too.”

The show
saw Kher playing his film clips, discussing books penned by him, sharing
philosophies he lives by and playing antakshari with the audience. Talking
about how performing for Zindagi Ka Safar overwhelmed him, he says, “I
recreated a scene from Saransh (1984) because they requested me to do so. It
was difficult to recreate a scene from a film that released 37 years back. It
made me burst into tears.”

Joining
Kher was Jugal Hansraj, his co-actor in Shiv Shastri Balboa. “I needed someone
who I was comfortable with; who was a listener and could ask me questions at
the same time,” he ends.