Ever since he can remember, Manoj Bajpayee wanted to be an actor. His mother tells him stories of how when the family would gather to watch films at home she would invariably notice the toddler on her lap quietly smiling at the screen. “This is my purpose,” recounts the actor who as a young boy had wanted to be “someone like Amitabh Bachchan who just comes on the screen and mesmerises.”
It was from there that an interest in cinema at large had steadily started to grow. The young Bajpayee would be frequently found devouring whichever film was being shown at the local cinema. He remembers watching older classics like Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962), Hunterwali (1935), Aag (1948), Awara (1951) and Jagte Raho (1956) and recalls being deeply affected by some of the performances in them. It was this early love for the medium that eventually drove him to his vocation.
Working with new talent
The actor is currently looking forward to the release of his new film Rukh this Friday. Directed by debutant Atanu Mukherjee, it is the story of a son looking for the reasons for his father’s sudden death. He must dig through the past and unpack its many hidden layers in order to understand and come to terms with it. Bajpayee plays the father, the head of a middle class family, present through the flashbacks and whose life, the son discovers, had been slowly spiralling out of control. Bajpayee is full of praise for his talented co-actors Adarsh Gourav, Smita Tambe and Kumud Mishra who he believes have kept him on his toes. He calls Atanu Mukherjee a brave, non-compromising and visionary filmmaker.
Bajpayee says that the decision to work with younger directors in the recent past has been a conscious one. “First-time directors are the people who are not ready to be convinced by your experience, and that is so beautiful,” says the actor who relates to the attitude. The actor says this stems from his younger days when he refused to accept advice and had his own method. Bajpayee sees this new generation of filmmakers being eager to do things their own way and learn in the process. Their radical methods, he feels, also challenge experienced actors like him to return to the basics and experiment further. This new generation has had a completely different set of life experiences and has been exposed to a variety of things that were not available to him when he was growing up. The commercial mainstream, he regrets, was the only option back then. Bajpayee experiences a sense of achievement in having discovered and encouraged work by younger filmmakers.
Different mediums
Speaking of recent work, we drift to the subject of short films and his significant contribution to that space. Bajpayee credits his wife Neha for his entry into the field, admitting that it was she who had pushed him to try the medium. It was a time when he along with Devashish Makhija, the director of their upcoming project Bhonsle, were looking for producers and one evening, acting on a sudden impulse, he gave Makhija a call proposing to do a short film with him. In four days, Bajpayee recalls, Makhija was ready with the script of Taandav and they started shooting almost immediately. His short film Kriti was the result of a conversation he remembers having with Shirish Kunder at a party at Farah Khan’s place. Ouch similarly emerged from discussions with Neeraj Pandey about short films and how they offer a break from the rigmarole and rigid routines that full-length features impose.
Bajpayee assures me that their approach to these films was in no way less serious and involved just as many workshops and readings. “This is what I wanted to contribute to the platform,” he says, “the seriousness of it… Everything that you are putting out there has to have some meaning, has to have something in it for the people to see and appreciate,” he emphasises.
On the current trends in Indian cinema, Bajpayee feels that there is now finally “a healthy coexistence” between the commercial and parallel streams. It’s a goal that actors like him have struggled to achieve for years. When asked about that most path-breaking of films – Satya – and his role in it, Bajpayee says that at a time when the commercial mainstream was the only kind of cinema being made in India, it required two-three brave filmmakers like Mani Ratnam (Roja), Shekhar Kapur (Bandit Queen) and Ram Gopal Varma (Satya) to shatter the established modes. Filmmakers and actors today, he feels, “should be thankful to these filmmakers for changing the grammar of storytelling.” He mentions actors like Kay Kay Menon, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Raghubir Yadav, Pankaj Tripathi, Rajkumar Rao and others who should be “preserved and pampered… These are the actors who can make a lot of difference to the craft of acting,” he says.
Changing times
For Bajpayee the biggest proof of a visible shift, “a reflection of the changing times” is in that films like Aligarh and Newton are not only getting releases today but are also adequately mentored and equally appreciated by the audiences. It is an indication that the audience is ready to accept new stories and modes of telling. What is crucial then at this point is to build on what had been acquired, “We have to consolidate our base and that will take another ten years. We cannot afford to be complacent just because one Newton has done well.”
Bajpayee is confident that the upcoming Rukh will be appreciated by a significant section of the audience. He mentions a brief moment in the film that he shares with his on-screen wife where he comes back to tell her that all will be okay. “Some magic has happened there,” he smiles, acknowledging that the scene probably affected him strongly because of his own similarities with the character he plays. He understands the responsibilities that the head of a middle class family has to bear: the father is always under the pressure of setting things right, of providing support and confidence to the family even when everything is falling apart. “That sequence gives me goosebumps,” he says, “it will stay with me for a long time.”