How actor Pankaj Tripathi’s story changed after Newton, India’s entry to the Academy Awards

Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 15, 2017)

Over the past three weeks, Pankaj Tripathi has, despite being not too familiar with Twitter, has encountered the pseudo pleasure of a blue tick; started using earphones “because the phone gets uncomfortably warm when you repeatedly take calls”; and has, perhaps, after over a decade of being wedded to their daughter Mridula, finally banished his in-laws’ doubts about her choice of husband.

“That night was something else,” says Tripathi, about the time he watched Newton, India’s entry at the Academy Awards, with his in-laws at a Malad theatre, seated on the second row. The man seated next to Tripathi recognised him and asked him whether he, too, featured in Amit Masurkar’s black comedy which revolves around an election at a remote polling booth in Maoist-hit Chattisgarh. “I said ‘no, I’ve just come to watch it’.” When the movie ended, Tripathi — and his in-laws — had to make their way a scrum of admirers.

I am at Tripathi’s spacious but simple rental in Malad. The tiny apartment he first stayed in when he came to Mumbai over a decade ago is visible from the large windows of his current home.

Tripathi, a tall man with piercing brown eyes, speaks with a gentle, elegant cadence — it’s almost as if his speech were italicised — about Gopalganj, near Gorakhpur, where he grew up; studying and acting at the National School of Drama in New Delhi; the years he spent working in stultifying television serials in Mumbai; and about his precisely calibrated portrayal of Aatma Singh, the CRPF officer in Newton, a man unused to being disobeyed and who is the State in a region in which it’s just a notion.

When Tripathi first read Newton’s script, he thought Aatma Singh was too much of a bad guy. “So I told Amit ‘yaar, let’s add some grey to this character’. We are all neither good nor bad, just in between.”

Tripathi’s portrayal of the CRPF officer — both an instrument and a victim of the State — is among the stand-out performances in an exceedingly brilliant ensemble cast. But he rates his performance as the ruthless Kehri Singh in the dystopian Gurgaon as his most accomplished yet. “I’ve always believed that my job as an actor is to engage the audience. With Kehri Singh, I didn’t have many tools to do it, and I had to make the best of what I had.” Tripathi might have marked himself out with the portrayals of Kehri Singh, Rangeela (Anaarkali of Aarah), Principal Srivastava (Nil Battey Sannata), and Sadhyaji (Masaan), but Newton, he says, is a kind of new dawn, a breakout film for him. “I can feel it. I even got calls from Dantewada, and how often do people like Mahesh Bhatt call up someone to appreciate their performance? I saw his name flash on Truecaller, and was taken aback. What touched me was his mention of how even in sequences that were wide angles, or where Aatma Singh was out of focus, I stayed in character.”

With Newton, though, Tripathi, who has been besieged with offers, says he is starting on a clean slate, and certainly doesn’t want to do Bihari roles. “Our industry makes you a stereotype overnight. All ‘baaps’ and villains have the same traits. I have a major problem with Bihari clichés, so it’s a daily fight. The Biharis you see in Hindi films don’t exist in real Bihar, just as ‘balle balle-wale’ Punjabis and ‘dhokla-undhiyo’ Gujaratis too, don’t exist.”

Plus, he says, he has to be more careful about the kind of roles he plays. “I was jogging near my home last week, and a few youngsters came up to me and started appreciating my work. They didn’t know my name and neither did they ask me for a selfie. They just kept referring to me as Mishraji, Panditji (from Fukrey) and Sultan (Gangs of Wasseypur). It was an eye-opener. I told myself, ‘main kuch bhi bakwaas kaam nahi karunga’.”

Tripathi says he has also been examining the illusion of success since Netwon released. “Sometimes, I’m astounded, especially when I am invited to inaugurate malls — in Bihar — or attend Navratri events, both of which have happened recently. I tell them (invitees) that I will be out of place there. I can’t mimic anyone; I’m not a ‘shayr’ — why can’t they invite a social worker instead? I don’t think actors are as important as they are made out to be. There are several other people who are more significant as far as society goes.”

Tripathi, 42, will be seen in several movies over the course of the next year. He will make his Tamil debut with Pa Ranjith’s Kaala Karikaalan, in which he plays a Maharashtrian police officer, alongside Rajinikanth; he’s getting all spiffy for Karan Johar’s Drive, which also stars Sushant Singh Rajput and Jacqueline Fernandez (“for the first time in 15 years, I had a hair stylist!”); there’s Fukrey Returns at the end of the year, and Mirzapur, a 10-episode mini-series in which he plays the lead.

Filmmakers, he says, have finally begun to see him for more than just a Bihari. And, he plans to make the most of it by remembering a couple of things. One, is his guru B V Karanth’s advice about “creating maximum through minimum”, which refers to economy of gestures and expressions, and the other is to act as if he were simply living his character’s life. “That’s the ultimate aim,” says Tripathi. “Act as if you are living someone’s life, and there is somebody capturing it.”