Can great acting be an impediment?

Avinash Tiwary in stills from Laila Majnu, Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, Bambai Meri Jaan, and O’Romeo

If you're Bihari, 40 - as actor Avinash Tiwary is - lemme hazard a guess. You'll have an uncle called ‘Pappu Mama'! As does Avinash. Pappu Mama is also actor Manoj Bajpayee's old friend.

Except that while Avinash had dropped out of engineering college to take up acting, he'd hear stories about fellow-Bihari, Manoj, from Pappu Mama - "somewhere that seeded the thought of pursuing the profession" - they only first met a couple of years ago.

Manoj insisted to Pappu Mama that Avinash attend one of his movie previews, where he told ‘Pappu's bhanja': "Listen, I know all about actor-arrogance. Come over sometime. I cook great mutton (common Bihari-male speciality)!" That mutton meal, I'm told, hasn't happened yet.

The reason this came up in my conversation with Avinash is he's born in Gopalganj. Tiwari-Tripathi like, say, Dubey-Dwivedi, is the same surname. Hence, I wished to know if Avinash was related to actor Pankaj Tripathi, instead. He's not.

The other thing that Manoj, Avinash have in common is - at some point, they trained under theatre instructor, Barry John. Avinash was 19 then. He moved to Delhi for Barry to live in a semi-shanty in Saidulajab, sharing even that tiny space, often, with a "senior actor", then 15, named Aditya Kumar, who played Perpendicular in Gangs of Wasseypur. They'd watch movies together.

Avinash was to apply to the Royal Academy of Drama Art in London. He went to New York Film Academy, eventually - an instructor there, DJ Mendel, he considers as his mentor, besides Barry, and the late, octogenarian writer-director, Lekh Tandon.

The first time I saw Avinash was with Imtiaz Ali and others, while moderating a panel-discussion in Indore, before the film Laila Majnu (2018), that nobody had seen yet.

It didn't occur to me he was the same guy from the lovely, Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2016). I bumped into him later at a Bandra café, where it was impossible to match this cool-looking dude with the deviously rustic villain, Chandan Mahto, from Khakee (2022)!

"It's bizarre to call an actor, versatile - what else are they supposed to be," Avinash reasons.

That said, could resolutely immersing oneself into a character be a detriment, when people remember roles, films so much, that they can't instantly recall ‘Avinash Tiwary', the actor, himself?

He switches onscreen personalities as swiftly between Dara in Bambai Meri Jaan (2023) and Jalal in O'Romeo (2026), although they're based on the person (Dawood Ibrahim): "One's the making of the devil; the other, its presentation in full glory."

Or for that matter, as Satya in Bulbbul (2020, fantasy), Ayush in Madgaon Express (2024, madcap comedy), Amay in The Mehta Boys (2024, father-son drama) - fine films, such genres apart. Avinash agrees with what I'm getting at.

He cites athletics as an example, "Everybody knows Usain Bolt. Do we know the marathon champion? How do we decide the fastest runner?" Depends on distance, too. And he feels, that works out in the long run.

It has, if you consider stardom as shorn of its intrinsically desi element, that is, vanity - focussing on Avinash's range plus performances alone. He suggests, "The importance accorded to selling escapism is embarrassing."

A shift, he believes, will occur, once power structures change, with audiences preferring actors based on "skills, craft, rather than their desirability." People appreciate Irrfan, Naseer, Manoj, Kay Kay Menon, in hindsight: "But how many went to theatres to watch their films?"

I sat, before a camera, chatting with Avinash for almost two hours. The mental portrait that emerges is of someone more than simply a self-obsessed actor - as he walks down memory lane to his parent's government accommodation in Antop Hill, attacked, during the 1992-93 riots. He had recently moved to Bombay. As a child, sitting by the window, he saw his father, a civil servant with customs, getting into the middle of a charging mob.

His mother had sheltered the local sabziwala; local jewellers had trusted the family with their stocks for safekeeping. Avinash recalls, "We were outsiders ourselves…. When you've seen stuff like this, conversations around reel & real heroes seem bothersome."

That grit/persistence shows in Avinash's career as well. He's been around for over two decades. His turning point could well have been starring as the antagonist opposite Amitabh Bachchan in the TV series, Yudh (2014), produced by Anurag Kashyap. It bombed.

So did Laila Majnu, in theatres: "It took me 15 years to get there [as lead]. Three years to make the film. It was gone in three days!"

In 2024, Avinash happened to visit Liberty Café in Srinagar, where few girls made an Insta reel with him that went viral, overnight, leading to a public gathering to meet Majnu/Qais Bhat at that café. Fans petitioned
INOX, online, to release Laila Majnu in the theatre in Srinagar, that had reopened after 30 years.

From one screen in Kashmir, within days, shows expanded to 700 houseful screens across India. Laila Majnu became a super-hit, six years after release.

Dumb luck; what to say? "Even privilege is luck," Avinash explains. I agree.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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