Jaideep Ahlawat - A harbinger of comfort in chaos

Jaideep Ahlawat is a powerhouse of talent and here’s why I feel that he has cracked the code of playing morally grey characters who we’ve grown to love over the years!

I remember the first time I watched Jaideep Ahlawat as Khalid Mir in Raazi. I was deeply fascinated by how he portrayed his character. He was the man who trained Sehmat (Alia Bhatt), and as someone whose job was to train a spy, he had to be that ‘sakth insaan’ who shows no emotions at all. While he stayed true to that and picked on her when she showed even the slightest sign of weakness, there were moments when his eyes spoke way louder than his dialogues would. He had a sense of slight compassion towards her, a feeling of ‘stay back, don’t go’ or ‘I hope you’re okay’ that he constantly suppressed, because the minute he would succumb to emotions, she would become weak too.

In that moment, like Sehmat, I too was comforted by Khalid Mir who wasn't built for comfort at all. Maybe because somewhere we all know someone like him, who pushes us to be perfect in every way, someone who barely shows emotions but who’d be our confidante at 3 am. That’s the image that I held of him in my mind when I first saw him on-screen.

Little did I know that he was an emerging talent who would be discovered by the industry (thankfully) and dominate our screens for a pretty long time! Post Raazi, I saw him in Lust Stories when he shared screen space alongside Manisha Koirala and the two were cheating on their S.O. There were no two thoughts about the fact that his character was knee deep into infidelity but because he plays it so non-chalantly it weirdly makes me root for him and that was so conflicting. On one hand, he was cheating on his wife but, on another hand, he was the biggest green flag to his mistress; this left me perplexed about  who he really was. That’s the beauty of Jaideep Ahlawat!

Also Read: Paatal Lok season 2 review: This season elevates the art of making the invisible visible

Years later, I saw him alongside Kareena Kapoor Khan in Jaane Jaan. As a major Kareena fan, I am always first in line to watch every movie of hers. But as the film progressed, I was stumped by Jaideep’s meticulous, calculative yet eerie version of Naren Vyas, a math teacher. Naren was the good guy gone bad in the name of love. When Maya (Kareena Kapoor Khan) commits a murder, he overthinks every possible outcome that can go wrong and makes a plan for her to get away with her crime. Naren was known as the teacher who did everything by the book. A simple man who was known to live a simple life, until he was put in a position where he unleashed a side of him even he didn’t know he had.

His performance in the climax left a deep impact on me! That one loud scream physically scaring me and making me take a step back from my screen will live rent free in my head. He took the blame for love, he became violent for love and yet, every time he was on-screen, I knew Maya would be safe. How he switched from his comfort to crazy duality in this film will be the biggest proof of how well he balances the good and the bad in his characters, hence continuing to define 'finding calm in the chaos'.

He had his breakthrough with Paatal Lok. The world was consumed by Hathiram Chaudhary and the good, bad and ugly he brought on-screen. Hathiram was as complicated as a human being can get but he is a force to be reckoned with. He's progressive when it comes to the world but quite regressive when it comes to his own wife like when she wants to take tuitions and earn a living. When he's put in a situation where he learns that his colleague, Ansari, is gay, he encourages Ansari to own his truth as long as it feels right to him, even when this isn't a concept he's familiar or comfortable with.

Even though he had a dark and abusive childhood, he wants to be different for his son. But the more he ran away from it, the more he became that until he found his footing as a parent towards the end of season 1. Hathiram Chaudhary is a backward-yet-forward thinking, liberated but restricted character and in his own black and white way of looking at the world, he embraced the grey in him without even realising it. That’s the living paradox of Hathiram that I found comfort in!

As his body of work speaks for itself, it is safe to say that anything that he is a part of will pull in audiences today, including me, of course! So here’s to an actor who re-invents himself with each character and may we all get to see more and more of his work each year!

Happy birthday, you powerhouse!

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