Manoj Bajpayee: The star actor

Saibal Chatterjee

Twenty years have elapsed since Ram Gopal Verma’s cult Mumbai underworld thriller Satya catapulted him into the limelight, but Manoj Bajpayee continues to sustain his passion for his craft and his quest of fresh challenges. This enables him to still spring surprises, not the least through the manner in which he balances roles in independent projects like Aligarh and Gali Guliyan and publicised appearances in glitzy Bollywood potboilers like Aiyaary and Baaghi 2.

There is more of the latter on the way. Bajpayee’s next outing, Milap Zhaveri’s Satyamev Jayate is slated for release on August 15. The vigilante thriller co-stars John Abraham. Early next year, Bajpayee will be seen in a pivotal role in Abhishek Chaubey’s dacoit drama Sonchiriya, co-starring Sushant Singh Rajput and Bhumi Pednekar. The film is currently in post-production.

But it is Bajpayee’s non-mainstream cinema outings that his admirers seek out the most. And there is good news for them: the star-actor was in Cannes two months ago for the first-look launch of Devashish Makhija’s upcoming political drama Bhonsle.

The film looks at the vulnerability of North Indian migrants in Mumbai. Bhonsle has Bajpayee in the role of a terminally ill police inspector who has been relieved of his duties against his wishes and, in the actor’s words, “is running away from his loneliness”.

“It is pointless choosing a film of the kind that one has done before especially in the independent cinema space. There is absolutely no challenge in repeating yourself,” says Bajpayee. Spot on. Bhonsle promises to be another landmark in a much-feted acting career.

The film hinges on an “undefined relationship” that develops between the eponymous protagonist and “a migrant woman who comes to live in his neighbourhood and faces grave threats to her well-being.”

Bhonsle has been in gestation for four-and-a-half years ago. The politically sensitive theme of the film scared away prospective producers “when we went around pitching the idea in the Mumbai industry,” says Bajpayee. So the only alternative that we had was to look for multiple producers who would put in small sums so as to minimise the risk.

“The team that is behind the film is of people who believe in the idea completely,” says the lead actor, who was sold on Makhija’s screenplay from the moment it was narrated to him. His association with Bhonsle is also obviously a part of his strategy to lend his weight to adventurous movie projects that might benefit from his star power.

These critically acclaimed films, which have travelled to festivals across the world and won Bajpayee many an accolade, have helped him enhance his global profile. His name is now reportedly attached to Tip Top Taj Mahal, an international production to be helmed by British-Indian director Bharat Nalluri.

The film is an adaptation of Krishna’s Dairy, a play authored by Jacob Rajan and staged for the first time in the late 1990s. It is about an Indian who migrates to New Zealand with his family and starts a convenience store but struggles to adjust to his new life in an alien land.

Roles in independent Hindi films have lately seen Bajpayee don the guise of a gay university professor immersed in his own world of poetry, Lata Mangeshkar and two pegs of whisky a day (Aligarh), of an Old Delhi man grappling with memories of a troubled childhood (Gali Guliyan) and a father/husband who feels that he has failed his family (Rukh). None of these roles was a cakewalk.

“What other characters could have thrown such challenges at an actor. These were demanding yet rewarding roles that called for a great deal of preparation, introspection and questioning. Each helped the actor in me get in touch with newer facets of the craft,” says Bajpayee. His choice of roles indicate an obvious partiality towards complex, conflicted characters.

It is a marvel that Bajpayee, who won a National Award for his performance in Satya (1998) and followed it up five years later with a Special Jury Award for his role in Pinjar (2003), has lost none of his enthusiasm for his calling. He still strikes out in new directions whenever the opportunity presents itself. Does he believe he has more such openings today than he did when he debuted in a bit role in Govind Nihalani’s Drohkaal (1994)? He says: “You are talking to a person who fought to create this space. After Satya, I could have opted to play villains in many films with big Bollywood stars. But I chose to sit at home and bide my time. I waited for the tide to turn.”

Now that it has, isn’t he planning global moves as an actor? Bajpayee replies: “At least one film of mine each year now travels across festivals.” So, as he himself suggests, there is reason to believe that new frontiers lie ahead for the consummate, constantly evolving screen performer.