Tahir Raj Bhasin: Pandemic has made us realise how essential it is to have an audience

Actor Tahir Raj Bhasin feels that living with the pandemic has been difficult for everyone, more so for actors, who have been deprived of getting their work out to the cinema audience as much as they would have liked.

The actor, whose recent release ’83 was delayed for more than a year and a half, says, “What the pandemic has made us realise is that how essential is the process of having an audience watch it [film]… having friends and family watch it. [How important] preview screenings and feedback [are]. It is all so much part of the whole process. That process has been delayed a little bit [in the pandemic.”

Bhasin’s last release before the Ranveer Singh-starrer was Chhichhore in 2019. Throughout the last year, what kept him going was the small window that he got to shoot his projects.

“We are fortunate that we had the fallback to be shooting and be working. As actors the joy of it comes from the doing, which is being on set. I was very fortunate to be shooting [my upcoming series] Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein because it gave me that opportunity, even while we were in the lockdown, to be prepping for it. We were channelling energies into creative process. The joy of doing is what kept you going,” he tells us.

Another thing assured the 34-year-old in the grim times was the knowledge that he was not in this alone.

“There was a huge bond in knowing that this is something that you are not going through in isolation. It was not just actors who were going through this, there are cinematographers, directors, writers, spotboys. All were in the same situation of not having the creative outlet that they normally do, ability to earn. And not just this industry, everyone went through a stall, in some way of the other,” says Bhasin, who will also be seen in another web series titled Ranjish E Sahi.