Dubai: What Nikeeth Thomas fondly remembers the most of his primary school days in the UAE are his swimming trips with his father to the beaches of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. Twenty-three years on, it’s that call of the sea that’s got him back here once again and hopefully for a long, long time, said the man who played the stunt double of Suraj Sharma, the main character in Ang Lee’s multiple Oscar-winning film Life of Pi.
“I love adventure and the waters, so I had to be here again someday,” Thomas, who recently took up a job as a business development executive at a Dubai-based production house, told XPRESS.
The 34-year-old went to St. Joseph’s School in Abu Dhabi and St. Mary’s in Dubai before moving back to Bengaluru in India with his family in 1992. “The tallest building then was the World Trade Centre and traffic on the roads was generally thin,” he added.
Adrenaline junkie
“It’s all changed now so much, but it’s got just everything adrenaline junkies like me can hope for,” said Thomas, who married a Canadian woman of Indian origin last January before deciding to settle down in Dubai “for the next few years at least”. His bucket list of things to do here, he says, includes getting a licence in sky-diving and exploring all diving sites in the region.
Thomas’ love for deep sea diving began by chance in India when he decided to quit his job at a design house in Mumbai and take a ship to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
“What was to be a two-week break ended up as a life-changing affair for me. As an adventure guide, I began taking out groups of tourists on kayaking, snorkelling and even hiking trips and soon fell in love with life underwater. Soon I came back to Bengaluru and joined a scuba-diving company,” Thomas recalled. That job took him to the Maldives next and he grew further fascinated by underwater activities, ending up soon as an underwater videographer.
“I guess it was my love for the water that clinched the Life of Pi job for me. I got a call from nowhere one day from a friend of mine telling me Ang Lee was looking to cast someone with deepsea diving abilities, but he had to have looks and build similar to those of Suraj Sharma.
“Of course I had to work a lot on shedding flab and looking like a then 18-year-old Suraj Sharma, but it was my abilities underwater that impressed Lee,” said Thomas, a business management graduate who also holds an open water diving certificate.
“It was an out of this world experience for me at the set, filming inside what is possibly the world’s largest artificial wave tank, but the most challenging bit was to be able to master holding my breath for two minutes under water,” said Thomas, who filmed for six months in Taiwan and four weeks in Pondicherry.
“My life continues to centre around water and I hope I am able to continue this love affair whilst I live and work here in Dubai,” he said.
