Small town boy to famous star

By Subhash K. Jha

IN his star-making vehicle Satya Manoj Bajpai never looks into the eye of his ganglord Bhau (Govind Namdeo). "How can I? He picked me up from the streets gave me food and home. In our culture we talk to elders with our eyes lowered."

That’s Manoj Bajpai. Still a small-town boy from Bettiah in Bihar disbelieving about his suddenly-found stardom. But determined to hold it in his hands, nurture and nourish it until it (stardom) becomes substantial and selfperpetuating.

Stunning portraits of the negative forces that manoeuvre man’s nature in Satya and now Kaun and three popular awards for his performance as the gangster Bhiku Mhatre in Satya have not dimmed his enthusiasm for serenading on the steep side of stardom. He could have signed hordes of films after Satya, made precious millions to give his parents and siblings a comfortable life. Instead Manoj chose to reject most of the roles that were offered to him after Satya. "They were all variations on my character as Bhiku Mhatre. If there’s one thing that I won’t do, it’s repeat myself."

Manoj prefers to stick to the tried-and-tested terrain of Ram Gopal Verma’s cinema. Verma virtually gave Manoj a new lease of life. Mahesh Bhatt who introduced Manoj through television and then a small role as Paresh Rawal’s friend and confidante in the feature film Tamanna would never have allowed him to grow beyond a peripheral point. During the shooting of Verma’s ill-fated Daud the director kept staring at Manoj. Naturally the manly gaze made the small town boy uncomfortable.

One day Ramu asked Manoj to come for a long walk with him. The ambitious actor complied suspiciously. Ramu told him about a film on the human side of gangsters that he wanted to make. Initially Ramu wanted Manoj to play the title role of Satya (which the Telugu star Chekravarthy eventually played). Later they both felt he could imbue a kinetic vigour to the role of Satya’s buddy Bhiku Mhatre. The rest was history and hysteria.

"In Daud I had a very small role, so I couldn’t interact with him much. But in Satya I encountered a new Ram Gopal Verma. I could see his passion and energy growing with every moment."

The important thing was to treat the character of Bhiku Mhatre as a human being who represented all the anti-social characters in our society. "I had to avoid making him a caricature. At the same time I had to make Bhiku Mhatre a prototype of the gangster. While trying to feel think and act like Bhiku Mhatre I couldn’t help being affected. Some part of Bhiku is now inside me permanently."

Every role that Manoj plays alters him radically. Kaun in which he plays an over-the-top executive who terrorises a girl who’s alone in her house is another award-winning performance for Manoj.

"There was no hype surrounding the release of Satya. There’s no hype about Kaun either. Satya started badly. Then it picked up by word of mouth. Likewise I’ve full faith in the merits of Kaun."

For an unknown actor who was trained under Barry John in Delhi stardom seems like an unbelievable leap into the unknown. Providentially Manoj hasn’t slipped and fallen in taking that leap. Since Satya was his seventh film Manoj wasn’t pushed into stardom overnight. Satya gave his adrift career a sense of direction. "Now I know what to do and how to go about it. When I was going through my initial struggle I sometimes began to doubt my own abilities, "Manoj whispers softly recalling his early years in Mumbai when his wife left him. She had seen him as a star on the Delhi stage and couldn’t bear to watch him start from scratch in Mumbai’s tinsel town.

"In Satya I was like a corpse being revived, the actor shudders." All his years of training under the legendary Barry John seemed to evaporate in Mumbai where he was constantly criticised for his height,weight, lack of sex appeal, charisma... everything. Now the same mandarins of moviedom are falling over each other to sign Manoj.

He has nothing but praise for his drama teacher Barry John. "He’s one of the best theatre directors in Asia. He chiselled my abilities and changed me as a human being. He taught me how to look at others as human beings. He helped me to channel my frustrations and anger."

Manoj describes himself as a pathological actor. "I can’t survive without acting. If I don’t act for a week I become edgy, restless and moody." During his childhood days in Bettiah, Manoj would enact scenes from his favourite films in his mind. Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar and later after Ek Duje Ke Liye, Kamal Haasan were his favourite actors.

Little Manoj’s parents worried constantly about their son who seemed to be lost in his own world all the time. Today they are proud and happy about Manoj’s success. When he returned to Bettiah recently to shoot with his crew for a film called Shool the entire township clamoured around the locations shouting and cheering for their ‘Manoj Bhaiyya’ or ‘Manojwa’ as they affectionately address their prodigal son. Shooting on a railway station in Motihari with Raveena was like trying to hold back waves of surging emotions. It was an emotional homecoming for Manoj.

Another highly memorable moment occurred recently when Manoj came face to face with his idol Amitabh Bachchan.

That moment when Bachchan congratulated Manoj for Satya is frozen in the young actor’s mind. "I didn’t know what to do. The actor who had inspired me was standing in front of me and paying me compliments. I asked him if I could hug him. He agreed. We hugged each other."

In Mumbai’s cinema Manoj Bajpai is being touted as a mixture of Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Haasan. He possesses the former’s seething intensity and the latter’s zest term for life and quest for perfection. All the time even when he’s socialising with friends, Manoj is busy thinking about his characters. This, Manoj says, has isolated him from social interaction. Women find this boring. He finds the lack of companionship worrisome, more so since his parents and brother think it’s time Manoj settled down.

Unfortunately, women look for the dangerous and sinister characters he played in Satya and Kaun. "I’m looking for a woman who can share my madness," he laughs.

Manoj is happy being a celebrity. But he hates the trappings of stardom and the unreal world that actors are forced to inhabit. Fortunately he hasn’t changed as a person eventhough he has been changing persona swiftly. From the excitable gangster in Satya to the loony on the prowl in Kaun, Manoj next plays an overpossessive brother to newcomer Antara Mali in Ram Gopal Verma’s Telugu film Prema Katha. This shall be followed by Shool in which he plays an idealistic cop in Bihar with Raveena Tandon playing his wife to add glamour to the gritty film.

Then Manoj moves to his dream project to essay the role of a sexually normal natua dancer from Bihar. With every film, Manoj Bajpai is pushing the frontiers of mainstream stardom a little further into the grey zone. And guess what? Audiences are with the actor all the way.