Nawazuddin Siddiqui appears to be the perfect example of a rags-to-riches story as the actor has lived his journey from sleeping on an empty stomach to making it big in Bollywood in the city of dreams, Mumbai. From sending across paper chits to his village crush to sending messages to himself on his pager, Nawazuddin has as many stories to tell, given the number of twists and turns in his life.
On the occasion of his 46th birthday, here are some of the interesting anecdotes from his childhood and days of struggle.
The Maths teacher who taught him punctuality
Nawazuddin claims the credit for his addiction to punctuality goes to his maths teacher Premchand at his village school. Calling him a stickler for punctuality, the actor had told Hindustan Times Brunch in an interview, “He’d be in school much before it opened for the day, even when he was sick or had an emergency at home. I used to go to him for tuition, and he insisted on punctuality.”
Nawazuddin’s neighbourhood crush
Nawazuddin had once revealed how he liked a girl who lived a few houses away and kites were the only means of communicating with her. He had said, “I’d write messages on slips of paper and attach them to my kite. Then I’d fly the kite and dip it over her yard, she’d pull the message off, and I’d quickly pull the kite back. To get her replies, I’d have to repeat this exercise – but I had to wait for the wind direction to be right. One day, the girl’s father caught hold of a chit. So things became a little problematic for the both of us.”
Dropping a message to himself
Nawazuddin had once revealed in another interview to HT Brunch about how he and his jobless friends spent several days going to studios with their biodata but never got a response from any of the filmmakers. Sharing an incident about giving a reply to himself, the actor revealed, “We all had pagers in case there was a casting offer. But no one ever got a call. Out of frustration, I would often go to the nearby telephone booth, call myself on the pager and leave a message saying: ‘Call me immediately, Subhash Ghai’!”
When Nawazuddin didn’t want his NSD colleagues to spot him doing ‘crowd’ roles
Nawazuddin and his friends once walked several kilometres to play blink-and-miss roles in an advertisement and blew up almost the entire earnings of the day on food. He said the ad was being shot inside a bus at the Goregaon Film City. He had told HT, “We were asked to be part of the crowd. My friend read a newspaper, while I acted like a man taking a nap. The idea was to do the role, but not to show our faces. We needed the money, but didn’t want our colleagues from NSD to spot us doing these ‘crowd’ roles.”
