Cezanne Unplugged!

It's a stuffy set, crammed inside a dilapidated textile mill in suburban Mumbai. Three decrepit walls rub shoulders with a fourth, that sports garish paint and nestles a lavish divan. The Hum 2 Hain Na set hums with activity. Cezanne Khan is reclining at ease on the divan, nursing a tumbler of tea, at home in these seemingly incongruous surroundings. His deep brown eyes twinkle, his silky locks fall stylishly over one brow, and the diamond stud in his earlobe sparkles. It isn't hard to imagine his leading ladies falling for him, as the rumours go. Cezanne laughs, an impish laughter that makes him look much younger than his on screen serious persona. "That's my luck!" he sighs. "Perhaps, my height makes me unsuitable for the college boys' roles!" Right now, Cezanne is in no enviable position. In Hum 2 Hain Na, he is playing Vir, a business tycoon who falls in love with a married woman with a kid. In Kasauti Zindagi Kay, his travails continue. After intermittently losing Prerna to Mr Bajaj, he will now have to age 20 years and play a mature Anurag. Doesn't it bog him down? "Not really," he says, determination writ on his face. "I have spoken to Ekta, and it's clear that I won't wear any grey in my hair. Besides, the focus stays on me and Prerna - it will be a mature love story now!" And what about the buzz that he reportedly asked for a doubling of his dues for playing a guy double his age? All untrue, he avers, with a shake of those brown locks. But what is true, he admits, is that compensation is most likely to come in the form of another role in a Balaji serial soon, in which he plays a younger, more true to life role. For an actor who quit his MBA midway to join Mohan Azaad in his theatre troupe, moved to modeling and landed in television acting, Cezanne is surprisingly unambitious. "I am modestly ambitious. The film offers have been many, but I have my prior commitments to finish," he says. Obviously a man who loves his creature comforts, Cezanne has recently bought himself a bungalow in Versova, and acquired another Tata Safari to add to an existing SUV. Marriage is still a no-no, and despite the tricklings of rumours that do the rounds of the industry that Cezanne has been having a string of relationships that encompass his co-artistes. "Believe me," he puts on an earnest look,"I haven't even dated anyone for the last six years. There's just no time!I shoot nearly every day!" While that may sound a mite far fetched, marriage is nearly five years away, he insists. For the present, he enjoys his food and sleep and his 400 title odd collection of movies, trance music on long drives in his new SUV, and his passion for the martial arts. "Often" he says,"I don't even know whether it's day outside or night. Once I enter the studio, I am in another world...." A world in which Cezanne has aged much faster than he ought to.