/> Though he doesn't like to talk about it, during the making of Shaurya Rahul Bose lost his father Rupen Bose.

"Nobody knows this. But my dad, a full-blown Bhadra Lok played a role in my first starrer English, August. He would visit me on location for every film....The only one he couldn't make it for was Shaurya.

During English, August he was there. And he just fitted into the role of Paltoo Kaku like a glove because they needed a Bhadra Lok.

For Shaurya he was supposed to join me as usual.I was shooting in Manali and he was in his home in Kasauli. I heard he had collapsed and was rushed to the army hospital where they saved his life for the time being. So you see I owe a lot to the army," says Rahul gratefully .

The army backdrop in Shaurya seems more than just a coincidence.

One remembers what a trauma it was for Akshay Kumar to know he was losing his father while shooting Suneel Darshan's Jaanwar. The tears he shed in Jaanwar, Akshay had confessed, were real.

Says Rahul, "I remember I had two sequences to shoot with Kay Kay Menon on the day my father collapsed. One was in the morning when we share coffee and the other in the night when we share a drink.

My director Samar Khan offered to cancel the shooting. But we all know what budget constraints the smaller filmmakers work under. I continued.

And it wasn't such an ordeal. In fact it was a blessing to slip into another world that didn't remind me of Baba."

Rahul finally opens up on the sensitive issue. "I modeled my character in Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Kaal Purush on Baba. The tactile rapport that my character shares with his daughter and son was directly echoed from what Didi and I shared with Baba."

Rahul admits his more subtle performance in Shaurya is taking time to register. "Everybody after seeing Shaurya is full of praise for Kay Kay...and rightly so.

But it's only now that I've started getting phonecalls for the credible sane element that I represent. That's a direct reflection of the way Kay Kay and I have played out our characters.

The aggressive character always wins the applause first. If we had both screamed in the courtroom the moral equlibrium of the sequence would've gone for a toss."

Rahul feels the performances in this country are judged by their immediate effect. "Unfortuantely in this country the more aggressive performance is considered 'better'. The notion of silences on screen escapes our audience. We aren't a subtle people.

I faced the same situation with Mr & Mrs Iyer. It took a whole for people to understand my quiet performance. I've done a rabble-rousing performances in Sanjay Jha's Mumbai Chaka Chak.

Just like the guy in Split Wide Open and Pyar Ke Side Effects there's nothing subtle about that guy. But I enjoy subtle performances like English, August, Chameli and the forthcoming The Japanese Wife. The last is by far my quietest and most satisfying performance.

Reading the reviews of my unruffled performance in Shaurya I wonder how critics would react to that one. For now I'm happy because Shaurya would be my most successful film after Jhankar Beats."

So is Shaurya Rahul's most difficult part? "No Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam is the toughest role I've played. He's part RAW agent and partly lovelorn buffoon. A lethal combination."