So where were we? In the middle of a long conversation with actor Pankaj Tripathi, we suddenly lose the thread and have to go back to my notes to figure how we had begun. An exchange with Tripathi is like that, a free flowing, meandering, stream of consciousness. One thought leads to another and then yet another. No doubt Tripathi, soon to be seen as an eccentric school principal in Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s Nil Battey Sannata , is a talented actor, but he is an even more accomplished raconteur.
The actor himself admits to how he creates subplots within a plot so that the listener may not lose interest in his tales. This talent was exploited by the students’ union while he was studying in Patna in the ’90s. As a member, he was assigned the task of bringing the crowd together and holding its interest. “I used to tell jokes, keep the kids entertained till the leaders came and talked ideology and politics.”
Born to a farming family in the village of Belsand, near Gopalganj, Bihar, Tripathi studied there till the tenth standard. He remembers performing small roles in the amateur plays put up during the Chhath festival: “This was the kind of theatre in which no one remembered their lines and the only job of the director was to prompt from behind the curtains.”
His father wanted him to become a doctor, but he never objected to Tripathi’s taking to acting either. However, the multi-talented son dabbled in a lot of things before settling down with theatre and films.
He was a very good sportsman, participating in the 100 metres sprint and kho kho, and he was high jump champion at Magadh University in Patna.
A right-wing students’ union member, Tripathi even spent seven days in jail in ’93 for participating in a violent local agitation.
Those days proved to be a crucial step in his march towards cinema. He spent a lot of time reading in the jail library, and got exposed to left-wing thinking and the literary works of giants like Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh. “Art and culture mein vaampanth ka dabaav aur prabhav raha hai [art and culture have seen the influence and domination of the left wing].”
A show of Lakshmi Narayan Lal’s Andha Kuan and Pramita Jaiswal’s performance in it immensely moved him and got him hooked to theatre for life. Tripathi attended the performances in town with such regularity that the guy at the theatre’s cycle stand stopped charging him, as he was such a dedicated audience member. One of his own performances in amateur theatre found his name published in the newspaper. “The reviewer spoke about apaar sambhavana [endless possibilities] in me as an actor,” he recalls. It motivated him. Also, all the other things he was dabbling in couldn’t hold his interest for long. He wasn’t enjoying sports and the promise of a constable’s job through the sports quota didn’t excite him. He didn’t like the idea of embracing politics either: “It forces you to bow in front of the leaders, turns you into a sycophant.”
He was compelled by his uncle to do a course in hotel management in Patna, where he worked night shifts as a trainee cook in a hotel. “But I realised I was meant for something more than potatoes and onions.” Nonetheless, Tripathi compares acting to cooking, both of which he excels at. With the latter, you have to be careful about the ingredients; how much salt and pepper you put in a dish; acting for him, is also a similar kind of a measure, of emotions: they should neither be too little nor too much. “There is texture, colour and taste towards which you work when you are cooking a vegetable. Similarly, I work on a character, with his looks, his personality, his quirks.”
Tripathi also claims to bring in life’s experiences and draws from the works of his favourite authors, Phanishwar Nath Renu, Uday Prakash, Sanjeev. “Every member of the crew on the film set has a button to push. An actor has none. For him, that button is his own experiences.”
It was in 2001, in his second attempt, that he cleared the entrance test for the National School of Drama in Delhi. But he looks back at those years with regret. Not for what was taught but at his own attitude as a student. “It is a fantastic institute, but I was too laidback and not serious enough about it.”
After the training, he spent some time in Patna doing theatre, but soon realised he wouldn’t be able to survive as an artiste. “Hindi theatre hasn’t developed commercially as well as Gujarati and Marathi theatres.”
So Tripathi decided to try his luck in films at the behest of a friend. October 16, 2004: he still remembers the day he landed up in Mumbai Central on the Golden Temple Express. “Every actor remembers his first day in Mumbai though he may forget many other significant ones.”
For him, embracing Bollywood hasn’t been about glamour but for livelihood and survival. He did a lot of television for the same reason: “I never dreamt of becoming the hero, was not choosy about my roles, believed in doing whatever came my way.” Even a Dilwale , Singham Returns or Gunday . But he has an explanation: when a big film releases in 5,000 screens simultaneously, you connect with people in a bigger way. “I got messages from as far as Romania and Greece for Dilwale .” He also strongly feels that it is because of the commercial contribution of a Dilwale or Bajirao Mastani that a small film like Masaan is also able to find its way to a theatre.
The role of Sultan in Gangs of Wasseypur has been his passport to recognition and fame. “It was unexpected. I used to wonder what unique thing I am doing,” he says. But the role of the butcher and henchman of Ramadhir Singh got so popular that more butcher roles started coming his way. “No one wants to experiment in the industry. I started getting tired of the gangster roles,” he says. This is why he never wanted to play macho characters. “There is a word in Bihari, mauga , which means the exact opposite of macho. I wanted to play that. I can even do a woman’s role with just the right amount of femininity.” So Masaan helped in discovering the more sensitive element within. It led him on from the brutality of Sultan to the humane Sadhyaji who forms a unique, indefinable bond with Devi (Richa Chaddha).
Tripathi is becoming more conscious of his choices of films now; there are audience expectations to live up to. What dictates the choice is the comfort and ‘tuning’ with the director and the script. “It is very difficult to make a bad film with a good script. You can hold a film for 30 seconds with your visuals but in the 31st, the story has to come into play.”
Coming up next is a diverse set of characters that an actor of his calibre deserves to play. Anarkali Aarawali has him play a dancer, another art form that he is very good at but hasn’t quite put on display on screen. In Shankar Raman’s Gurgaon , a story of a father-daughter, he plays the builder father. Then there is Mango Dreams , a tale of an auto driver (played by Tripathi) and a doctor who travel from Ahmedabad to Wagah; one is a Sikh, the other a Muslim; one a victim of the Partition, the other of the riots. The challenge here for him was to speak in English and that too for sync sound. In Amit Masurkar’s Newton , he plays an arrogant CRPF commandant. “We had to match acting skills with 40 tribals who were natural in front of the camera,” besides walking for hours in the jungle and staying in three small guest houses in Dalli Rajhara near Raipur.
Ask him about his favourite role and he says that he wants to play straight and simple characters. Like Raghuvar Prasad in Srilal Shukla’s book Deewar Mein Ek Khidkee Rehti Thi . Or like his 90-year-old father who walks six kilometres every day in the village, sleeps at seven and has no tensions and complexities in life. “Things have become too grey and black. There are too many layers. I want to play a pure, simple soul for a change.”
There has been no return to theatre, though he did work once in a play for the money. He loves the immediacy of the audience response in theatre but cinema gives internal enjoyment to him as an actor. “In theatre, you have to project your expression across to the viewer in the last row. In films, you reach your own truth as an actor. You just have to be there in the scene, in the moment, with your co-star, and just feel and react.”
It has been almost 12 years in Mumbai now, but his heart still belongs to his village. His house in Charkop in Andheri faces a huge pond and a temple, giving a sense of expanse and a rural feel in the middle of the urban jungle that is Mumbai. A place where he can sit for hours together engrossed in another quaint hobby of his: reading maps. Of Andheri, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India and the world.
The role of Sultan
in Gangs of Wasseypur has been
his passport to recognition and fame
