The third? fourth? fifth? in a series of profiles of the interesting people that I have been lucky enough to have met during this long, strange trip. Roopak "Roopi Sallu" Saluja (453-HA '93) was one of those guys when he arrived as a fresh-faced, bespectacled, overweight, Mama's Boy in the Spring of 1987 at a small boarding school oh-so romantically tucked away in the foothills of the Himalayas. This article was written by Pratik Basu (442-TB '93).
y those, I mean an abundantly talented, abundantly charming, abundantly full-of-potential boys that the teachers had scribbled down to eventually win the starting Quarterback job once he got a few years under his belt. [No, we played the soccer version of football back in India, not the NFL version of football. I tried to use this tortured metaphor – or is at an analogy? – to reach common ground with The Better Half, who is a fan of the NFL type of soccer; though, to be fair, thanks to my committed jumping on to the Beckham Bandwagon, she is becoming much more attuned to the soccer version.]
Now, there were two sides to Roopi Sallu. There was that bespectacled, overweight, somewhat studious, tabla-playing side. Then, there was that pop-culture spewing, life-of-the-party, American-accent throwing (his father was the Indian Ambassador to Panama at the time, and apparently the Indian Embassy got all 183 of the channels that DirecTV had to offer back then), wanting-to-be-part-of-the-cool-kids side.
Obviously, these were two fairly mutually exclusive sides and slowly, but surely (as the man himself would say "I'm not slow, and don't call me Shirley."), the latter side began to win out. The wire-frames were replaced by contact lenses (Really? We were allowed to have contact lenses back in school? Maybe they were just fancy designer frames? The memory is always the first thing to go on the wrong side of 30…); the tabla disappeared (no cool kid was ever in the school orchestra); the class sections dipped below 1 (in school the kids were segmented into sections 1 – 4 per subject-block depending on your grades); the debate and drama tryouts never materialized; and a hard-fought invitation to The Musclo Gang was granted.
And, as these things sometimes happen, some kid no one saw coming was handed the proverbial Quarterback (Atul Sabharwal? Kunal Sharma? Gaurav Murgai? Varun Khanna/Sharma? Gaurav Tulli for getting into IIT? That depended on what your definition of being Quarterback is/was.), and Roopi Sallu became another sad part of the Unfulfilled Potential group (like all those first-round Quarterbacks who never "make" it in the NFL).
Of course, since he had known what the other side of the social divide had looked like, Roopi Sallu was nice enough to always spend a little time with people like me. Therefore, I was not surprised when he sought me out a few years later when he made it all the way to the University of Rochester. Something was different about Roopi Sallu. He was skinnier, taller, and more determined to make a serious go of it this time around. Also, he was wearing contact lenses this time, I am sure about that.
Alas, once again, Roopi Sallu was not going to outrun what was fast becoming his destiny: Unfulfilled potential.
The grades dropped, the attendance sagged, and the weight increased. Finally, Mama's Boy had to be rescued by Mama (and believe me, if you ever needed to be rescued no matter what the situation, you could do a lot worse than Sallu's Mama) and whisked off to…Hungary.
Naturally I assumed that my friend would continue inexorably towards his Date with Destiny, exiled in some backwood Eastern European country I had barely heard off, and the world would forget the story about another talented person who couldn't quite answer the call of greatness.
And, as is usually wont to happen in matters concerning my judgment, I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Just as Prague had become the new Paris, Budapest was now the new Prague. Under the strict guidance of Mama by day, Roopi Sallu excelled at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics; and let loose on the city by night, he DJ-ed at every hip hotspot from, um District I to District X.
Reports flew in from all over the world that Roopi Sallu's Date with Destiny had been greatly exaggerated. A Dosco saw him DJ in Ibiza. Another Dosco saw him become the honcho-in-charge of the Motorola account for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Ogilvy & Mather…in Paris! Paris! Then, news was sent though the Dosco wires that he had started his own record label. His own record label! Admission into INSEAD (next to Hah-vahd, the most famous Business School in the world) followed, after which Roopi Sallu decided, in all his infinite wisdom, that he wanted to go to Bollywood and become an actor.
Ah, there it was. Those familiar sounds of Destiny knocking on his door, the neon Unfulfilled-Potential signs outside his window, and my writing him off…it was déjà vu all over again.
And, this being déjà vu, I was wrong…again.
Roopi Sallu started his own film production company (his own company); co-produced some feature films; made TV commercials; became buff; and then, he put that last piece of the puzzle in place.
Roopak "Roopi Sallu" Saluja managed to grab a role in the very first Hollywood-Bollywood co-production…a co-production he was, um, producing. He was producing it!
Oh yeah, along the way he managed to get engaged to a famous Bollywood actress.
I found this out the old-fashioned way: Headlines in the Society section of the Bombay newspaper while waiting for my flight to Kozhikode/Calicut.
This brings to my mind my favorite quote from my current favorite book [Pessl, Marisha. Special Topics in Calamity Physics. New York: Viking Adult, 2006. 232.]:
"In the end, a man turns into what he thinks he is, however large or small. It is the reason why certain people are prone to colds and catastrophe. And why others can dance on water."
So, people like Atul Sabharwal, Nisheeth Ranjan, Kunal Sharma, Ajay Singh, Bharat Talwar, and Roopak "Roopi Sallu" Saluja, they refused to be bound by what they were supposed to be in The Doon School, and turned into what they have always thought they should be…and learned to dance on water.
As for me? While I am happily being prone to colds and catastrophes in my cubicle-dwelling-thankless-job-with-a-solid-middle-class-salary life. I shoulda had Sallu's Mama rescue me as well!
