by Subhash K Jha

Just back from Kashmir after shooting Santosh Sivan's second Hindi film (earlier entitled Dastaan) Rahul Bose is awfully surprised by stories accusing him of taking over the directorial reins of Samar Khan's Shourya in which Rahul Bose plays a lawyer fighting for a man wrongly convicted on religious grounds.

This would be Samar Khan's second feature film after that wispy waffle of a film Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye. This time Samar has gone from meetha to teekha.

Says Rahul, "Why would I direct Samar's film? If I want to direct a film I'd happily find my own film to direct. Shourya is entirely Samar's film. Every single frame of the film is Samar's. These stories of me taking over are entirely fictitious. I've never done it, and I never will."

Rahul says he doesn't like to mix the business of acting with the pleasure of direction, and vice versa. "As an actor my greatest joy is to understand a director's vision.

Whether it's Buddadeb Dasgupta, Aparna Sen or Santosh Sivan....the journey of discovering their vision through my acting is what interests me....and to make their vision mine.

I think it's the greatest insult to Samar to suggest that he'd stand by and let someone take over the direction in a story that has come from the center of his heart. It's a very personal story."

Continues Rahul, "I don't believe I'm capable of a crude imposition of my will. That's the most cowardly thing an actor can do."

If on one end Rahul is doing a serious socially relevant subject like Shourya, on the end he has something as nakedly commercial as Shivum's Ghost Ghost Na Raha and Sanjay Chhel's Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam.

"I'm trying to balance out the entertainers with the more serious films. I don't want to be branded a serious actor all my life."