If 2020 reiterated one point many times over, it is that the game isn’t over until the last ball is bowled. Be it the IPL, the US presidential elections or the Bihar Assembly polls, the thumb rule everywhere was — it ain’t over until the last vote is counted.

It applied to the entertainment industry as well when Bobby Deol, hitherto written off as a player, wrought a stunning 500 per cent increase in the second season of Aashram. Directed by the intrepid Prakash Jha, the first season had recorded 450 million streams, making it one of the biggest successes on OTT, a gamble for MX Player with its risky free-to-watch business model.

Bobby did everything in Aashram a mainstream hero wouldn’t dare to. He had people kidnapped, bumped off, turned into junkies; he played politicians against each other, seduced women, and castrated their husbands too, under the guise of a benign Babaji with a sprawling ashram.

“Yes,” laughed Bobby, sporting a glow that only success brings. In fact, the first scene he shot for was in a hospital where he visits a castrated husband and blesses him for having achieved purity.

“It wouldn’t have had the same impact,” explained Prakash Jha, “if I had cast someone with a negative image. Bobby worked precisely because he was a surprise. I needed an actor who could otherwise be convincingly charming.”

Unlike Sunny who’d famously ripped apart his vest and shouted himself hoarse in Ghayal, Bobby was always the reticent sibling who’d at the most sport a singlet in Soldier, but never go bare torso.

Confidence arrived with a gym-toned body and a nudge from Salman Khan. “The first thing Salman asked me was, ‘Mamu, shirt utarega?’ I said I’d do anything.” And Race 3 took off, co-starring him with Salman.

While two big-ticket franchises — Race 3 and Housefull 4 — failed to endear themselves to the audience, what they did do to Bobby was prepare him for a mind-switch where chalk-white heroism would not rule his choices.

His introduction to OTT came during the lockdown when he played an unexpectedly credible and greying dean Vijay Singh in Red Chillies’ Class of 83 on Netflix. Even if the patchily-directed film didn’t pass with honours, it built his confidence further, topped with Aashram that gave him mass acceptance.

What most don’t know is that Bobby’s turn as the wicked Babaji was the biggest surprise for his own family. Neither dad Dharmendra nor Sunny bhaiya had an inkling he was playing a womanising conman.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” Bobby chuckled. It did away with the perception that Dharam and Sunny controlled his career. “It isn’t true,” he said. After initial films like Gupt and Soldier, Bobby has pretty much been his own man.

When his parents’ friends started applauding his act as Babaji, Dharam had an interesting observation to make. “He told me that when he had done a rape scene in Qayamat, his mother could not sit through it. She had scolded him asking, ‘How could you do such a scene?”

But Dharam accepted that times had changed. An actor could now get away with any well-written character, including the unabashed seduction of other men’s wives.

Remarking that as an actor he was comfortable doing any scene, Bobby said gallantly, “It was more about whether your co-star was comfortable doing it.”

Discomfort for him was over the shuddh Hindi and Sanskrit-laced dialogues in Aashram. Unlike Phagwara-reared Dharmendra, Bobby was an urban Mumbai kid. So he spent six weeks under a tutor to get a grip on his high-flown Hindi lines.

Convinced that work in any format was welcome, Bobby went back to shooting on November 1 — with a bunch of feature films and another edition of Aashram coming up.

Tomorrow, on Guru Nanak Jayanti, Apne 2 will be announced, starring Dharmendra, Sunny, Bobby and Sunny’s son, Rocky, the third gen.

It’s a happy phase. The tryst with alcohol and Restyl tablets when Bobby thought the game was slipping away from him is a forgotten chapter. For the last ball is far from being bowled.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author