A Stuntman's Dangerous Legacies

He takes the hurt. Literally. Metaphorically too.

Maybe one day, he will return to Gurdaspur to find peace. At least that’s the hope. For now, he has kind of made it in the world of cinema as a double, a stuntman and as an action director. But he also knows that his father had returned to their village in Punjab and died from everything that made him and ruined him simultaneously. That’s Bollywood. A trap. It is exhilarating and it kills.

Amritpal Singh, who was born in 1985 in Gurdaspur, never wanted to be a stuntman. His mother always said it was not for him to follow in his father’s footsteps and yet he ended up here, like most others whose fathers and grandfathers ended up here by chance.

It is another kind of pain to be on the screen and yet remain unseen. You represent the other. You are the body double and that’s where it ends. You know that you will always remain just that. A shadow. You will remind them of the star. Someone might look closely and recognise you in the shot. But the rest will never know it was you standing there and not him. You will never shine. Those are the hard truths with which he has yet not reconciled. He wants to be seen. In his entirety. Onscreen. “My father was a famous man. People would come from far-off places to see him. They told me stories about my father, Manjit Singh. He travelled by flight. He was the chosen one. He was the Amitabh Bachchan’s double,” he says. His father was in the Topkhana Kalan of the Department of Artillery. He decided to run away from the army and went home and cut his hair and an agent said he could be a fighter in Bollywood. His father moved to Bombay, lived with strugglers and stuntees. He met Veeru Devgun and worked with him as a double for Jeetendra first. “You can see him in Shehenshah in the song shot on the beach. He wanted to an actor but never thought of his job as one where you aren’t seen,” he says. There were injuries. Once, his wrist was broken. Later, his father started drinking. Work was scarce. They moved to Gurdaspur in 1996. “Everything was gone. The house and all. My childhood was very tragic,” says Amritpal, who had joined a call centre first.

He remembers his father’s last days when he was confined to bed. “He had been a fighter. He would cry with pain,” he says. “Maybe he transferred his fighter dreams to me.”

There was a time when he had accompanied his father to the Bachchan household and his father had asked for work. The actor had offered money but hadn’t come to meet his chosen double personally.

Many years later, Amritpal became the body double for Abhishek Bachchan in a film called Bol Bachchan. “He recognised me,” he says. But there is a faraway look in his eyes.

It was his friend Hardeep Vasan, who used to be a junior artist, who said he could find work for him in Bollywood. It was in 2010 that he got his card from the union for being a stuntee. Now, they work together. “You need to learn how to fall, how to save yourself,” he says. “You get paid for the risk.”

There were a few roles here and there. And then, there was this break that came his way. As an action director. But the film got canned. He is still out there. Falling. And waiting to rise. 

(This appeared in the print edition as "Hurt Body")