As told to Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 4, 2019)

My father was a lower middle-class farmer in the small village of Belwa in Bihar. He had a little plot of land and every day was a struggle to overcome the vagaries of the weather and grow crops, make ends meet and bring up six children. He was very ambitious for his children and made sure we all completed our graduation. I studied in the village till the third standard before being sent away to boarding school because the district town was 50 kms away. KR High School in Bettiah was a Hindi medium Catholic school with a lovely campus. During vacations, I would help my father till the fields, driving the tractor and running away from bank officials my father owned money to for the tractor and other loans.

After completing my 12th standard, I moved to Delhi with a burning desire to become an actor. My first play was an adaptation of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People. A classmate who had been thinking of directing a play since we were in the first year of college, finally landed the opportunity and encouraged by my passion, cast me in the main lead. The response was overwhelming and gave us the confidence to put up more productions.

I had heard of the National School of Drama and applied thinking that it would give me the chance to work with different instructors under one roof who would help iron out my weaknesses and mould me into a better actor. I was rejected and took it very badly and getting into NSD became an annual ritual. I was turned down two more times, but by then it no longer mattered because I had got busy with theatre. I did a few workshops with acting coach and theatre director Barry John and stayed on as a trainee.

Those were years of extreme poverty. Sometimes if we got a sponsor we would get paid a thousand or two a month, but that was rare. It was only thanks to supportive friends who were ready to share everything they had, from a roof to food and meagre savings, that I managed to survive what was a really difficult decade. Back in the village, my parents were worried for me and my mother would sometimes not eat for a couple of days. Fortunately, there were no phones in the village and the only way of communicating with them was through letters so they had no idea how bad things really were. But these are the sacrifices you make to reach somewhere.

I was completely focussed on acting and there was never a desire to venture into another profession to earn a living. Since I had no film connections or godfather, I knew that the only thing that would sustain me in the long run were the skills I learnt. Barry not only shaped Manoj Bajpayee, the actor and the human being, but since I was working for Barry’s Theatre Action Group all day, assisting him with his workshops for children and with the production of his plays, they started paying me a salary of Rs 1,200 that helped me get by. I also got the opportunity to work with NSD alumni and teachers, and went on to conduct a few workshops at the NSD campus.

Then, Tigmanshu Dhulia who was the casting director for Bandit Queen, recommended me to Shekhar Kapur. I was paid Rs 50,000 for the role of dacoit Mann Singh. Half of the money went towards settling the bill with the local chaiwalla and with the remaining Rs 25,000, Saurabh Shukla and I moved to Mumbai. We started out sharing a room in a chawl. Soon several other strugglers bunked with us. The TV soap, Swabhimaan, gave me the financial freedom to live alone. I was doing Tamanna when Mahesh Bhatt got Pooja’s mother to give her one-bedroom flat on rent to me. I used to earn around Rs 16-17,000 of which around Rs 6000 went on the rent. But things had started to look up.

Since then, 25 years have flown past and now I’ve begun to take things a little easy and channel my energy better. I’m still intense about acting, but not as aggressive. If I don’t get something, life doesn’t end. I guess that’s what you call wisdom. And now, it’s at this juncture in my life and career that the Padma Shri has come my way. It’s not an award but a recognition for the person and profession and I can accept it with full humility, knowing what goes into the making of an actor and his evolution as a person. My wife is over the moon, my parents and siblings are overwhelmed and as for my village, state and district, it seems like they have bagged the honour.


The play ‘Netua’ in which Manoj Bajpayee (guy with one hand on his head) played a dancer who disguises himself as a woman; the actor in his early days (right; above)