 "Manoj Bajpayee: A not-so-definitive biography")
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Manoj Bajpayee: The Definitive Biography
Author: Piyush Pandey
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Price: Rs 499
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Pages: 165
Bhiku Mhatre stays with you long after you have watched Ram Gopal Varma’s 1998 classic, Satya. As the henpecked gangster Mhatre, Manoj Bajpayee grips you from the word go with a pitch-perfect performance. The success of the film brought Bajpayee, a theatre veteran who had been struggling for over a decade, to national consciousness. He found popularity and the right roles that displayed his range and versatility. Shool, Kaun, Aks, Zubeida, and Pinjar are some of the films Bajpayee went on to do. In 2019, he made his streaming debut with the The Family Man (Amazon Prime Video). Other films and shows such as, Sirf Ek Banda Kaafi Hai (Zee5, 2023) and Killer Soup (Netflix, 2024) followed. Any book on the man, then, is a must-read.
Manoj Bajpayee, The Definitive Biography has been translated in English by journalist Rohit Vats from Pandey’s original Hindi book titled Kuch Paane Ki Zid. Pandey seems to have known Bajpayee for a long time, and aspires to make a film. It begins with a disjointed set of anecdotes on Bajpayee’s parents and grandparents from Bihar, a story about a connection with Mahatma Gandhi. None of this is laid out chronologically or explained with clarity. The writer talks as if the reader would know the context. There is a “he went there,” “they said this” kind of narrative that baffles you. In fact, the whole family background and childhood part remain a mystery though the author spoke to Bajpayee’s siblings and parents.
The book picks up pace when Bajpayee shifts to Delhi. His struggles to get into the National School of Drama (NSD) where he was, shamefully, rejected for four years running. Given his phenomenal talent, you wonder what NSD was thinking. Much of this is set in the late eighties and early nineties though it is tough to decipher that since the chronology and time are never made completely clear at various points in the book.
The retelling of Bajpayee’s Delhi theatre days is the best part of the book. His involvement and passion for theatre, how Barry John took him under his wing, his struggle with English all make for interesting reading. Netua, the play that put Bajpayee on the theatre map in Delhi, is still talked about as a masterpiece. His shift to Mumbai, glimpses of his struggle there, his friendships and fights with filmmakers Anubhav Sinha, Anurag Kashyap, Varma, among others, are fun to read.
Most cinephiles would know that Bajpayee is the original actor who commanded big roles not as a typical hero but as a key character in a film. Sardar Khan in Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) or Prof Siras in Aligarh (2015) are people who stay in your head long after you have seen the film. It is actors like him who created the space that has come to be associated with a whole range of superb performers such as Irrfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Pankaj Tripathi, among others. His is a one-in-a-lifetime talent that has maintained its hold over audiences for over three decades now.
That is why this book disappoints. It does not establish what Bajpayee has meant for a whole generation of actors and filmmakers. Though it comes from a place of affection and admiration for Bajpayee, the book is a huge letdown for anyone who has been following the actor’s work.
It is, in fact, a good example of why talented and big actors/creators should be selective of who writes the “definitive” book on their lives. There is no basic chronology, something a good editor would have fixed, no feel for the actor’s craft, no sense of getting into his mind on how he approached a role or a character. There is some talk of it, and clearly Pandey has had several chats with Bajpayee over the years, but it doesn’t seem like he sat down with the actor for this book.
It is like many of the recent books on actors like Sanjeev Kumar or Rajendra Kumar that are done simply to leverage the name of the celebrity. There doesn’t seem to be a genuine in-depth attempt to trace their journey and tell their story to the world. You wish to read about Bajpayee’s life, his plays, his struggle, his films, his craft: you wish in short for a comprehensive look into the mind of an artist. What you get is nice anecdotes and some second-hand memories. It is a pity. Bajpayee deserves a much better book.