Rajkummar Rao is one of the most underrated actors in the country, but that hasn’t stopped the man from carving his own niche in the industry. Working with the quiet brilliance of an underdog, Rajkummar has found himself in the league of class actors like Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. While ‘Aligarh’ and ‘Shahid’ established him as a brilliant actor, movies like ‘Bareilly Ki Barfi’ proved he could pull off commercial roles with as much ease.
At a time when the industry is full of stars and newcomers are pulling off lead roles in big budget films, how does an actor as brilliant as Rajkummar Rao deal with everyday disappointment and rejection – something that is always a part of an artist’s life, no matter how big they are.
© Instagram/Rajkummar Rao
While speaking to Bombay Times, the actor said,
“I love what I do. For me, a film set is the best place to be in. As long as I am acting, it doesn’t matter whether I have faced rejection. I don’t even think of it or talk about it, because I don’t carry my past as a baggage. Neither am I futuristic; I don’t think about where I will be five years from now. This is life. Yahaan sab kuch hota hai. Rejection is also a part of it.”
Rejection is something we all have to deal with, no matter who we are. One could be a successful CEO, one could be an iconic Bollywood star – rejection knocks on everybody’s door. And when it does, we have two options. We can either let it overpower us and all our decisions or we can choose to forget about it till it stops making a difference. Most of us do the former; and it’s only human.
But the day rejection and failure stop mattering to us is the day we truly begin our journey towards brilliance in whatever we do. The shadow of impending failure never lets you truly give your best to something you do. Likewise, the weight of past failures prevents us from going out there and taking life by the horns.
If there is one thing that will distract us from the fear of rejection, it is work itself. When you work without the fear of failure and the lure of success, you focus only on the thing that matters the most – your work. This is not just the secret to being brilliant, it’s also the secret being happy. For failures cease to deject you; they are merely statistics of what did not work for you.
As Rao says, “This is life. Yahaan sab kuch hota hai.”