He was selected in the Air Force but failed because of poor vision. Yet, Rajesh Shringarpure’s dream of flying high has been realised post Sarkar Raj.

There was always the danger of getting eclipsed by the dazzling presence of the Bachchans in the film, but Shringarpure held his own with his spirited speech. The look of the character was entirely director Ram Gopal Verma’s idea, “Aggressive and ambitious, rural yet educated politician—that was the brief,” says Shringarpure. What about the unmistakably copycat spectacles? “That was also Ramuji’s idea. And all through the shoot I never realised the resemblance until the media pointed it out during the recent controversy,” Shringarpure insists.

He has neither met the mercurial young leader nor has he ever communicated with him. He never studied him on television either. Nonetheless, the resemblance is uncanny, “A mere coincidence,” the actor dismissively smiles.

Most of Sarkar Raj was shot at Ramoji Rao city in Hyderabad and the very first scene pitted Shringarpure against Amitabh Bachchan. “It was my introductory scene where I storm in and look through him deliberately, speaking arrogantly, taunting him about how he’s seen in the village only during the elections. Of course, I was nervous,” he admits.

But once Ramu introduced him to Bachchan, things just fell in place. “It isn’t easy being sandwiched between two stalwarts—the star of millennium and the other an actor of high calibre (Dilip Prabhavalkar). But they inspired me to give my best and like them, I want to belong to the rank of good actors,” he says.

His most memorable scene in the film happens to be the aggressive speech he delivers from a hill, “It was a one-shot sequence. All he junior artistes playing the villagers were Hyderabadi locals who couldn’t follow my Hindi speech at all. But once I finished they gave me a thundering applause, that in itself was a big compliment,” he relates happily.

Sarkar Raj incidentally isn’t Shringarpure’s film debut; he was also seen in Ashok Kaul’s Param Veer Chakra in the title role. But it was on the small screen that Shringarpure catapulted to fame as Krishna in Star Plus’ Saarthi. His next big break was in Sahara’s Saheb Biwi Aur Ghulam in which he essayed the role of Bhootnath with Raveena Tandon playing Meena Kumari’s part. In the Marathi film, Shambhu Majha Navasacha, he played a dozen different roles.