When art becomes business, it loses its soul: Raghubir Yadav

Veteran actor Raghubir Yav believes best lessons in life are learnt in scarcity, which is why art created in luxurious isolation lacks soul.

actor, who currently stars plays role of a vill he in Amazon Prime Video's critically lauded show "Panchayat", said he learnt everything about acting from his Parsi atre days.

"People have me a business out of our culture and artistes have isolated mselves. Earlier, one h to go through a lot of pain to learn something, that's why it h soul. But w it has become only about physicality. When art becomes business, it loses its soul," Yav told PTI in an interview.

Recalling his days of struggle, 62-year-old actor said he me little money, but received some of best life lessons. "When I was doing Parsi atre, I would get Rs 2.50 per day and re were days when it was only 50 paisa. For six years, I lived like a m with that atre company. It taught me everything about art, culture and music. Our industry is all about business and unless and until one learns se things y can't do good work."

Yav said re were days when he went to bed hungry, but thrill of learning new things everyday kept him going. " best lessons in life are learned in scarcity. If I would have been living in luxury of big houses, I would have never gained kwledge. thrill of learning gave me ar kind of high."

Reminiscing his time in Parsi atre, Yav said he wanted to continue living gypsy life as it taught him about culture, music and art of real India, that resides in rural areas. "I was in heartland of our country. I was close to real life. People from Parsi atre only considered Balraj Sahani and Motilal as great actors. Orwise y never gave any importance to film actors.

"re was this legendary actor in my atre company Moti baba, he died at 108 and when he used to come on st it was magical. I’ve never seen anybody act like him. He was one who taught me importance of learning a langu," he ded.

After spending six-years on ro, Yav moved to Luckw and eventually landed in National School of Drama, Delhi. His first film was 1985’s “Massey Sahib” and for his performance in movie he received many prestigious awards including best actor recognition at Venice Film Festival as well as FIPRESCI Critic’s Award.

He followed it up with memorable TV show “Mungerilala Ke Haseen Sapne” and "Mullah Nasruddin”. actor said he has become selective about his roles as he feels "quality of cinema is deteriorating". “That’s why I’ve done very few films in my career. I’ve mand to save myself from running after business or money. I’ve always enjoyed atre more because characters re are more real,” he said.

Yav, however, is hopeful that artistes will come back to ir roots one day and many people in new generation have alrey started walking on that path, like writer and director of his latest web-series “Panchayat”. “Panchayat”, which started streaming from April 3, is written by Chandan Kumar and directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra. Yav said he loved way series captures essence of rural India without making it look caricaturish.

“I really liked script of ‘Panchayat’ because langu of show, characters, story are all very real. I kw vills really well. I kw how a panchayat functions because I’m from a vill. script has captured real essence of a vill beautifully.” actor said while most of people in industry are unable to get hold of musicality of vill dialect, writer and director of “Panchayat” have successfully captured that on screen.

“ tone in which people in vills speak is very musical and re are only few writers who can capture that. In most of films, if y want to show a vill y make actors speak Bhojpuri. y don’t understand that in our country every vill has a different dialect. re is Awhi, Bundelkhandi and ors. “ beauty of every dialect is different. And rar than capturing that, people mostly make it look gimmicky. ‘Panchayat’ doesn’t do that.”

series focuses on journey of an engineering gruate Abhishek, who for lack of a better job, joins as secretary of a Panchayat office in a remote vill of Uttar Presh. It also features Neena Gupta and Jitendra Kumar in prominent roles.

RE: Coronavirus LIVE Updates: India's Confirmed Cases Cross 4000-mark; 109 Deaths Confirmed