My typical day starts at 7:30 am with a nimbu+honey+black pepper paani to keep my digestive system healthy. This is by the way most easy and tangible thing you can do to be healthy.  Then I proceed to running 3kms at least to keep my face and body fat free and then do pranayams to keep my "bheja" clean!

After this whole ritual of mind and body, I start with a few "acting" exercises to keep my "craft" oiled... these include a few random exercises like "object imagination", "body rotations", stick exercise and a lil bit of navras practise if time allows.

The day then really begins for me as my job 'right now' to find work as an actor starts... in common lingo it is called "STRUGGLE" or to make it more crude, "HERO BANNE KI KOSHISH" starts. I am sure you will identify more with this term if you are from north india... after all everyone who comes to find work in mumbai has come to be a hero (all technical ppl pls remember your respective relatives' 1st reactions). In fact everyone who has landed in the film industry is supposed to be a "hero". God forbid if he looks ordinary, he will have a hard time making his pupil understand that there is something called character artist also!

In my recent trip to my hometown, my papa whom I really admire for being the successful person he is kept asking me about my fall-back plan. Obviously as an artist is... I had none but to accept that would be plain stupidity  and I would be assigned a very low IQ  score right away! So I gave him a few options...

1) I will become an assistant to casting director and earn somewhere between 15k-25k

His block: You have no training!

My response: Exactly my point, papa. In fact as you say, even being an actor doesn't need any training after all. Which of the big stars was/is trained (mithun da is trained was a news to him!). Most of the successful casting directors today are "ONCE UPON A TIME IN MUMBAAI" ACTORS only, na... And I went on to take the names of films... casting directors... and the institutes they belong to. It also helped that few of them are GraFTII.

2) I can teach acting, earn 15k-25k.

His block: Who will ruin his life with you?

My response: First, I made him realise that this is not a very nice thing to say to me, apart from all the things he say on regular basis. Then I jumped straight into... Papa... I will STUDY... prepare COURSE MATERIAL... do MARKETTING... make a TEAM of fellow actors and give the students who BUY my course a MONEY BACK OFFER etc etc papa,,,, THIS THAT "some more jingoism" papa and then papa dearest is smiling,thinking that his son is back to studious and MBA avatar (PS: I GOT 90% IN CAT EXAMS IN 2005)... so he lets me go for the day..

These are a few of the things I do to keep my dreams of being an actor alive. All the options said above are, by the way, real options and I intend to work on them when I will see no other way working out... till then I need all your good wishes to be A WORKING ACTOR!

If you like what i wrote, dont just gossip in your friends circle, do write some comments here too for improvements and topic suggestions... next time it will rock (if it didn't rock this time!!) So do come back next sunday... see ya till then

                                                                                   VNNIE

                                                                            ACTING-2008