To Prep For 'The White Tiger', Adarsh Gourav Lived In A Village & Worked At A Small Food Joint

For Adarsh Gourav to excel at playing the character of Balram in The White Tiger, he had to get into the skin of it.?

In order to truly understand the character of Balram and experience poverty and then the need to break out of that vicious cycle, Adarsh Gourav chose to live in a village and work at a food-stall in Delhi.?

During?a chat?organized by The Museum of Modern Art, Adarsh talked about his experience of working at a food stall in Delhi.??

“I was basically cleaning plates and sweeping the floor. I got paid??100 a day. I worked there for two weeks, 12 hours a day, and it was incredible, eye-opening, and the hardest thing I have done in my life. There were moments when I would suddenly snap out of it, like, 'What the hell am I doing here?'” he said.??

Adarsh continued: “I would be in the middle of cleaning a plate using less soap because if I would use too much soap, he would get pissed, saying, 'You can't use so much soap in a day.' And I would be like, 'What am I doing here?'"

"Because there would be a big bandicoot running next to me, from an open sewer, and then I would be like, 'This is exactly what Balram felt when he was in the village because he knew his real potential was a lot more than being just confined to the boundaries of a village, and he wanted to get out of that rooster coop, as Adiga calls it.' I just wanted to experience that feeling of anonymity, insignificance and I stuck around for two weeks, till we started our script-reading sessions,” he added.??

?Now doesn't Adarsh Gourav deserve every single accolade that is coming his way for the portrayal of Balram? This is the kind of hard-work every actor should do.