As Chandu Champion marks two years since the release of Chandu Champion, Kartik Aaryan marked the occasion with a note as he looked back at the film and reflected on the transformative experience of portraying Paralympic gold medalist Murlikant Patekar.
The actor looked back on the physical and emotional journey behind the film, calling it the most personal project of his career.Kartik shared how this role changed him beyond a visible physical transformation and helped him reconnect with the values he strongly believes in.He wrote on his page on the social networking site “Instagram”: “Two years ago, I stepped into the shoes of a man whom the world had forgotten, and he ended up reminding me of everything I believed in.
I’m not sure I’ve put it all into words yet, but I’ll try. “This film is not just about a man who refused to give up, it is about scars that turn into medals, and setbacks that turn into comebacks.”The actor went on to reveal that although he lost 18kg for the role, the personal lessons he gained were far more important. “The 18 kg I lost was nothing compared to everything I gained. #ChanduChampion is the most special film of my life.
To play Murlikant Petkar, I had to become someone I wasn’t before. Every early morning, every drop of sweat, every moment of self-doubt while filming, it wasn’t an act. He was living.
“Kartik’s dramatic physical transformation has become one of the most talked about aspects of the film. In an earlier conversation with ETimes, his trainer Tridev Pandey revealed that the actor’s fitness regime is designed to mirror the training schedule of a professional boxer preparing for a competition. The actor is a vegetarian and only eats eggs. His trainer had previously shared with us, “Kartik loves eating eggs and there were many people who suggested him to start eating non-vegetarian food, but he just took my advice. Being a vegetarian, I knew how to get a body without eating non-vegetarian food, and he really appreciated my physique. So he just asked me ‘aise bodyban jayegi na?’ I told him yes.Transformation requires months of discipline and intense training.
Kartik reduced his weight from 90 kg to 72 kg without the help of performance enhancing substances. When he started training, he reportedly had difficulty performing even a single push-up. By the end of the operation, he was able to do push-ups with 50-60 kg of additional weight on his back.His progress extended to other areas as well. After finding basic skipping routines difficult, Kartik eventually mastered 14 to 15 different types of skipping as part of his preparation for the role. Meanwhile, in an exclusive chat with ETimes during the film’s release, Kartik spoke about his transformation for the role and said, “Both of them (getting emotionally and physically into the role) were tough and they were bonding together. Building that body was work that required a lot of patience and took a really long time. I never imagined a film like this, a genre like this and this is something I have never attempted. For me, I was trying to give 200 percent – be it psychological or physical in every possible way.”
We did a lot of workshops and reading sessions. We did a lot of workshops with a dialect expert to get the Marathi language down and not overdo it. There’s always a fine line between making it sound right and overdoing it. It’s been a long time since we started preparing for this movie. “All said and done, I’m really proud of this movie.”
