Cinema: The Quiet Hero

When in a room with Manoj Bajpayee, a discussion
about the 1998 cult film Satya that Ram Gopal Verma
directed is unavoidable. Bajpayee played a gangster—
the self-proclaimed “Mumbai ka king” and the beating
heart of the film, Bhiku Mhatre, and he’s tickled by the
fact that fans still recreate his maniacal dance moves
in the song “Sapne mein milti hai” from the film. “Satya is
a culmination of the brilliance of Ram Gopal Verma and
Anurag Kashyap. I wasn’t even sure that I was good as
Bhiku Mhatre. The love and appreciation I got for that
role still amazes me. I am truly humbled by the admiration
from fans over the years,” he says. The role won Bajpayee
a National Film Award in India for Best Supporting
Actor and remains one of his most popular roles.

But appreciation from peers, fans, and critics
did not always result in commercial success or more
work for the Bihar-born actor. His has been a story of
struggle. After being rejected thrice by the esteemed
National School of Drama (NSD, where he teaches an
acting class now), Bajpayee made his debut in Govind
Nihalani’s Drohkaal where he had a minuscule part.
But Bajpayee’s portrayal of the dacoit, Man Singh, in
Shekhar Kapur’s 1994 biographical drama Bandit Queen
caught Verma’s attention. Desperately in need of validation
and success, after a few duds at the box office
and even a brief stint with television, things began
to fall in place for the actor when Verma offered him
Satya. “I was promised the main lead in that film but
then Ramu changed his mind. I was so disappointed,
but then he said I’d be more suitable for Bhiku Mhatre
and the rest, as they say, is cinematic history,” he says.

Box office bonanza
Though the actor speaks emotionally about his initial
days as a struggler in Mumbai, Bajpayee has had
quite the year in 2018. Two of the biggest commercial
successes—Milap Zaveri’s hot mess, the jingoistic, vigilante-
cop drama Satyamev Jayate and Ahmed Khan’s
ode to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando, Baaghi 2,
had Bajpayee in them, playing significant characters
spouting dialogues that had the cheap seats roaring
with appreciation.

The actor has mentioned in previous interviews
that he needs to be part of these movies so that he has
some leverage with producers and distributors when
pitching them films like Bhonsle or Gali Guleiyan—smaller
budget films with newer directors that are not likely
to make moolah at the ticket windows. But fans at the
masterclass were forgiving of Bajpayee’s occasional
forays into moronic masala films as long as he regaled
them with roles like that of Sardar Khan in Gangs of
Wasseypur and Samar Pratap Singh in E. Niwas’s Shool—films that he still gets very nostalgic about.

“I played Sardar as a sex-crazed womanizer,” he reveals
to peals of laughter from a captivated audience.
“Sardar was a hero who had none of the qualities of a
hero—he saves no one, he’s not able to take revenge.
His only focus is on sex. We are making fun of the
typical Bollywood hero in this film,” he laughs.

(Photo: Courtesy of IFFSA Toronto)

Less is more
With the hard shifting and gritty Shool, he reveals
that he had to dive into his character and completely
immerse himself into a world of hopelessness and anger
to play Samar, an upright police officer who goes
up against a corrupt political system, which was a
painful process. “My inspiration for that role was Om
Puri’s character in Ardh Satya. That character took me
to a very dark place, emotionally. Though creatively
very satisfying, I don’t think I’ll be able to do such a role
again. It takes a toll on one’s health,” he says.

Immersive acting is a tool that Bajpayee has employed
in films in the past: in Hansal Mehta’s 2016
biographical drama Aligarh, playing a gay professor
who must deal with the hatred and judgement
that follows when his private life is brutally exposed
to the world, to Bhonsle, where he plays a retired
constable who is caught in a conflict between the Bihari
migrant community in a Mumbai chawl and local
Marathi politicians and their paid goons.

“For Aligarh I went on a special diet, as I wanted my physical frame to be a certain way. There is a shot in the film where you can see my thighs: they are spindly, thin! I also learnt Marathi and studied Marathi poetry to get the professor’s state of mind,” he says. In Devashish Makhija’s Bhonsle (Makhija directed the hauntingly disturbing Ajji about an elderly lady avenging her granddaughter’s rape), he utters but six lines. “I enjoy it, the pace of it, the digging into the innumerable layers of a certain character; for me it’s the internalization of the acting process that’s most satisfying and enjoyable as an artiste,” he says.

For Bhonsle, the actor also donned the producer’s hat after the film did not get picked up for almost seven years and is working on his next project with Makhija as well. His latest outing with another young director, Abhishek Chaubey, did not pan out well: Sonchiriya, in which Bajpayee played Man Singh (again!) failed to make any noise at the box office. Bajpayee who did not have much screen time, but a well-written role,
received praise from both fans and critics.

His next is Dhaka (the screenplay is by Joe Russo of Avengers fame), a Netflix film where he shares screen space with Chris Hemsworth and fellow Indian actors Randeep Hooda and Pankaj Tripathi. “I don’t think my part merits that much attention. Randeep has a much bigger role in it than me,” he signs off modestly. And the crowd laps it up adoringly.

Baisakhi Roy is a Toronto-based writer and editor
who loves to write about ordinary people and their
extraordinary stories. A lifelong fan of Hindi movies, she
cohosts KhabardaarPodcast, a weekly podcast on all
things Bollywood.