Manoj Bajpayee Recalls Growing Up In Conservative Village

Actor Manoj Bajpayee says he wasn’t encouraged to pursue the arts as a child. In a new interview, he recalled sneaking out to watch plays, and being mesmerised by them. In a conversation with fellow actor Sayaji Shinde on the Bol Bhidu YouTube channel, the actor recalled watching a ‘naach’ performance secretly, and how years later, he earned fame in the theatre circuit when he played exactly the kind of character that would be ridiculed by his community when he was younger.

He said in Hindi, “We used to have the Ram Leela in our village, and the part of Bihar that I’m from, acting was not a very respectable profession back then. They used to call it ‘bhaand’. I couldn’t even say that I wanted to become an actor. I couldn’t do plays after school, couldn’t do the Ram Leela. My family was so conservative, I was once trying to whistle, and my uncle came and whacked me from behind. I couldn’t be myself. I had to sneak around to even watch plays", eports Indian Express.

He continued, “We have this artform called ‘naach’, in which a man performs as a woman, because women weren’t allowed to perform. But the men who’d do naach were considered effeminate, or gay. They called it ‘launda naach’. I used to sneak out to watch it.”

As luck would have it, many years later, Manoj  Bajpayee was offered the chance to play one such performer in a play. He said that the play is about a character whose ‘manhood’ rages in response to the bullying that he suffers, and that it ends in a bloodbath.