Manoj Bajpayee: The Definitive Biography review: Making sense of an actor’s method

The veteran actor explained how John, a gay man, came out to him back in the 90s in Delhi, while Bajpayee was still very much a kid from Bihar who “didn’t even know what coming out was”. And now, John watched mesmerized as Bajpayee played a gay man with such unerring tenderness and dignity, bringing his A-game to the film. After the film, John apparently hugged Bajpayee for several minutes, overcome with emotion.

“Yes, this is true. It was a character study for Manoj. Such realistic portrayal in Hindi cinema is rare. I hadn’t seen such a complete and mature performance by Manoj till date. He was mentally and physically the character he was playing, and his acting was mesmerizing. He was so naïve, introverted and pure as Siras that all the people blaming him looked like monsters,” John tells Pandey.

The Definitive Biography is an episodic, anecdote-based book which takes a linear view of its subject’s career. Pandey’s writing is straightforward and functional, with short and efficient sentences being the norm. There’s very little ‘big picture’ analysis or a sense of overarching narrative. Instead, it sticks to its strength, which is piling anecdote upon anecdote from Bajpayee’s friends, family and colleagues past and present.

A flair for the theatrical

Some of the book’s most effective bits talk about Bajpayee’s time in Delhi’s theatre circuit in the late 80s and early 90s. There are two solid reasons behind this: One, this particular milieu (Delhi between ’87-95 or so) was full of super-talented actors working the theatre circuit and Bajpayee was one of them — alongside Piyush Mishra, Gajraj Rao, Divya Seth and so many others. The book has charming cameos by several of Bajpayee’s contemporaries. Second, this section does a good job of connecting the dots between this phase and Bajpayee’s later Bollywood career — the lessons he learned, the techniques he internalized, the alliances that he made in Delhi.

During the actor’s time with the Act One theatre troupe, Bajpayee collaborated with N.K. Sharma on a play called Netua, based on Ratan Verma’s eponymous story that had been published in Hans magazine. Netua was an ambitious story about a rural Bihari man who cross-dresses at weddings for money; the launda naach that’s pretty popular in the region. The village’s powerful and influential people exploit him financially and physically until one day when they go too far and the man’s threshold of patience is breached. Bajpayee put his heart and soul into the role, practising dance moves with a student of Birju Maharaj. In the book, Pandey narrates a story told by Gajraj Rao, who was also a part of Netua:

“An interesting incident happened during the third show. The electricity supply faltered right before the interval and everyone’s face turned pale for a moment. Gajraj Rao, who played a small role in the play, shares this anecdote: ‘When the lights went out, nobody knew how to react. I don’t know what came upon me, but I reached on to the stage and started speaking impromptu. I think it was a story about a village with no electricity, or something similar. We realized work can be done in the dark as well.’”

Later in the book, when we start following Bajpayee and Ram Gopal Varma on the sets of Satya (1988), this segment about improvisation springs to mind immediately as we see Bajpayee putting these lessons from theatre to good use. Again and again, we see him modifying or outright rejecting the script changes made by Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap (the two of them wrote Satya) and instead, imbuing his scenes as Bhiku Mhatre with a restless, always-in-the-moment energy.

Resurgence, improvisation

One of Pandey’s preoccupations is Bajpayee’s methods as an actor — how does he do what he does? Is he more of a ‘silent preparation’ guy, unwilling to peel back the curtain? Or is he an in-your-face method actor, someone who gets very upset if asked to break character while shooting? The truth is somewhere in the middle: Pandey does narrate several instances of Bajpayee being short-tempered and somewhat flaky on film sets, especially when he feels that the role demands that extra bit of attention (a great example is the 2019 film Sonchiriya, where Bajpayee acted alongside the late Sushant Singh Rajput). But at the same time there are plenty of famous examples here involving Bajpayee being a generally chill dude and not taking his vocation too seriously (Gangs of Wasseypur, for one, was a set where Bajpayee reunited with more than one old friend).

To that end, Pandey, too, usually follows up these accounts of less-than-ideal behavior with a funny story, much like how Johnny Lever and co. were used as ‘comic relief’ in the 90s. Here, for example, is a story featuring the semi-classical dance form Chhau — with a surprising guest appearance from the late Safdar Hashmi:

“Many of Manoj’s friends had to go for Chhau dance training because of him. Filmmaker Anil Chaudhary, who was once Manoj’s roommate, said that Manoj’s body movements were good. ‘He told us his teacher would start classes if there were three or four students. We had to oblige. That also meant waking up at six in the morning. One day, we met Safdar Hashmi, and he also joined us. One day, Guruji scolded Safdar for not getting the steps. To which, he replied: ‘Mera aangan tedha hai’ (referring to the Hindi saying, ‘naach na jaane aangan tedha’).”

Of course, there are some bits that stick out as dissonant from the rest of the book’s frothy tone. For example, we learn that Bajpayee mixed sleeping pills in an annoying assistant director’s food once — this story is listed as an example of Bajpayee’s penchant for pranks and his sense of humour. I think that whether you find this funny depends on which generation you are from — I highly doubt millennials and Gen Z folks (the generations swimming in medication already) would find drugging somebody’s food very funny, for example. Similarly, Bajpayee’s failed first marriage is largely glossed over, careful not to upset the book’s subject too much.

To delve into these things one needs a much more critical book than Pandey’s. But within these constraints, Manoj Bajpayee: The Definitive Biography is an enjoyable, fast-paced read for fans and neutrals alike.