/> It's not often that actors get to play real-life professionals on screen. Rajat Kapur got to play journalist Khalid Mohamed in Sardari Beghum and recently filmmaker Ashok Kaul cast himself as the sutradhar in Bhaggmati.

Now it's young and talented Nakul Vaid, the theatre actor who played the rookie cop opposite Nana Patekar in Shimit Amin's Ab Tak Chappan who gets to play filmmaker Goutam Ghose in the director's new Hindi film Yatra. It's a quirky clandestine cloak-and-dagger human drama about one man, Nana's emotional and topographical journey.

Says Nakul, "I get to play a filmmaker, modeled on Goutam Ghose, who meets a writer Nana on a train. Nana-ji narrates the story to me. That becomes Yatra."

There are two women in Nana's life, played by Rekha and Deepti Naval. "But I have nothing to do with them. All my scenes are on a train with Nana Patekar. I've enjoyed working with this mercurial but brilliant actor in Ab Tak Chappan I learnt so much from him. And now I've waited for than two years to do another film worth doing. I'm lucky to have Nana-ji as my co-star again. He's just so inspiring."

Did he copy Goutam Ghose's mannerisms?

"No I play the director in my own way. I don't think aping would help a performance. When Naseeruddin Shah played Mahatma Gandhi in Hey Ram he did it his own way. And Amitji in Sarkar wasn't imitating Bal Thackeray. The important thing is to get the spirit of the original character...like Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray," says the actor who was Amol Palekar's initial choice for Paheli.

Nakul brushes off the memory of another day. "Oh that was so long ago. And seeing what heights Shah Rukh Khan took Paheli to, I'm not unhappy I didn't do it."

The Ab Tak Chappan actor is all charged about Yatra. "I've seen what Goutam Ghose has done with Naseer in Paar and Shatrughan Sinha and Antarjali Yatra. I think I've finally found the chance to go beyond Ab Tak Chappan."