Meet Aamir Khan, Salman Khan’s co-star who didn’t have Rs 10 for train ticket, cut meat to survive despite being vegetarian
In a recent interview, Vipin Sharma talked about his struggles before being cast as Darsheel Safary’s father in Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par.
Vipin Sharma in short film Dhund/Instagram
Vipin Sharma is one of the most talented actors in the Hindi film industry. He gained prominence after playing Darsheel Safary’s father in Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par and then went on to work in critically and commercially acclaimed films including Salman Khan-starrer Kick, Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, Akshay Kumar’s Special 26, and Irrfan Khan’s Paan Singh Tomar.
In a recent interview, Vipin talked about his struggles before he landed big roles in Bollywood. Sharma, who had made his acting debut in the Doordarshan’s classic series Bharat Ek Khoj in 1989, shared that he had given up acting at one point and moved to Canada, but his life changed after attending an acting workship there. He told The Lallantop, “After attending the workshop in Canada, I realised that there is nothing else in my life except acting, and I can’t do anything else. So I threw all my belongings on the street in Toronto and bought a one-way ticket back to India.”
When he was asked why did he decide to leave India and move to Canada, Vipin recalled, “I was a highly dissatisfied person, and I used to argue a lot. I did not like giving a bribe to reserve seats on a train, I did not like the overall surroundings, and I had a lot of anger within me because I used to wonder why our society was like this, and having grown up in a slum made it very difficult. I was a rebellious person, and I once pulled the emergency chain on a train, and I was made to get down at a random station at night. They said, ‘If you can’t afford 10 rupees for a sleeper berth, then you don’t deserve to travel by the train.'”
The actor also shared that he worked in different restaurants as an assistant chef to make his ends meet in Canada, adding that he even worked as a butcher and cut meat despite being a vegetarian. “I even worked in an Irish restaurant where I had to cut and clean the raw meat and I am vegetarian. I had no other prospects, and I had no money, so I remember praying to God and asking whether this is his plan for me. The very next day I landed my first editing job at a big channel in Toronto”, Vipin said.
In the recent years, Vipin has impressed the audiences and critics with his sincere performances in the Hollywood thriller Monkey Man, Manoj Bajpayee-starrer legal drama Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, and multiple web series such as Paatal Lok Season 1, The Family Man Season 2, Guns & Gulaabs, and PI Meena.
