Pankaj Tripathi never cared for schmoozing

If Pankaj Tripathi had a choice, he’d rarely step out of his Madh Island home.

On a breezy Mumbai afternoon, I walk into his charmingly rustic villa to find the 48-year-old actor in the middle of an impromptu photo shoot. Seated on his living room sofa in a simple green t-shirt and maroon shorts, he looks like a dad on holiday. He’s surrounded by a group of middle-aged men who take turns posing with him. He’s exceedingly polite—the two-time National Award-winning actor patiently takes direction from a bank salesman holding a camera. But you can also sense the slightest hint of discomfort in the way he tightly clutches a pillow in his lap, as if in self-protection.

Apart from the star-struck bankers, the scene here is one of cosy domesticity. Tripathi’s wife, Mridula, whom he lovingly calls Sonu, pores over some paperwork, while one of the domestic staff calls for their daughter to come downstairs with her PAN card. Clearly, no one can escape the drudgery of paperwork. Their two Labradors, Jinny and Prince, sit patiently in the kitchen, waiting for the guests to leave so they can run freely in the villa’s lush gardens. There’s no big entourage or hulking security—just a driver, who directs me indoors.

Like any cynical normie, I’m automatically sceptical of A-listers who cultivate an aura of down-to-earth humility. Dig a little deeper—the way they interact with their staff or the haunted look in their publicist’s eyes when they’re asked even a slightly uncomfortable question—and you usually discover it’s all an act. Just another role to play for obliging journalists and adoring fans. Watching this play out though, I begin to suspect that Tripathi really is what he appears to be—a genuinely nice, affable man, uninterested in the limelight and unaffected by the many trappings of fame.

He speaks in carefully measured words, whether he’s looking back at his childhood spent on a farm in Bihar’s Belsand village (his “laboratory of life”) or debating the similarities between actors and politicians (“both are performing arts, after all”). He punctuates his responses with references to Hindi literature; effortlessly erudite without crossing the line into show-off territory. At times, he sounds more like a Zen monk than a hugely successful film star, whose last project (Stree 2) broke records to become the highest-grossing Hindi film of the year. “There’s no need to fly too high when you’re successful, and there’s no need to get frustrated by failure,” he muses. “Sam-bhava mein raho, stay calm in both victory and defeat. After all, what do you really need in life? Good sleep, the company of your family, your favourite food. The rest is all mithya, illusion,” he says calmly, slowly, matter-of-factly.

One reason that Tripathi is such an atypical film star is perhaps that he was never really enamoured by Bollywood. Growing up in Belsand, his main sources of entertainment were the radio and the amateur plays that the villagers would put on during festivals, the latter serving as his introduction to the craft of acting. He was 12 when he first visited a cinema hall, and only because his priest father had been invited to perform a puja at the hall’s inauguration.

He did eventually develop a movie-going habit during his time in Patna, where he did his pre-medical studies before shifting to hotel management. He remembers watching the Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan starrer Saajan (1991) in the theatre—he even grew his hair out into a mullet like Dutt’s character. Like many young men coming of age in the 1990s, he’d cut out photos of Madhuri Dixit from the newspaper and collect them as keepsakes. But films were just a pleasant diversion from the real love and focus of his life—theatre.

He joined a local theatre group, spending his days rehearsing and performing, and his nights working in a hotel kitchen. Eventually, he made it to the National School of Drama in New Delhi, where he studied acting and graduated in 2004. “I wanted to continue with theatre in Delhi—I wasn’t really interested in films. But I quickly realised that I wouldn’t be able to earn enough money for even bread and water doing Hindi theatre. That’s why I moved to Mumbai.”

Tripathi made a pact with Mridula—while he found his feet in the entertainment industry, she would work as a teacher and pay the bills. When he finally established himself, she could quit and do whatever she wanted (she’s now his manager). Mridula’s salary covered the rent and bills, but there was still the mental battle—facing rejection after rejection, long stretches without any work and the soul-sapping carousel of auditions.

Tripathi faced each difficulty with clear-eyed equanimity. “If you imagine a checklist of what it takes to be a film actor, then I tick off only one or two boxes,” he says. “I’m a Hindi medium student from rural India. I’m not a fashion icon or a good dancer. But that didn’t affect me, because of the lessons I’d learnt during my childhood—of humility and resilience. On the farm, you’d sow a seed, create favourable conditions, and then wait. For 20 days, one month, six months...till the harvest comes. So that’s what I did.”

He had no connections in the industry, and to date, remains the worst schmoozer in Bollywood. Other actors would urge him to go to industry parties, to make sure he’s seen in trendy clubs, but he wasn’t interested in doing the ass-kissing that passes for social networking in the industry. “That was what people thought you had to do to get work,” he says. “But I have never done that in my life. And once my growth started, when the hoardings of [his breakthrough 2010 TV series] Powder and then [Prime Video show] Mirzapur started to appear, I realised that you could be successful without all that, too.”

Tripathi’s grit—and his insistence on doing things his own way—would eventually pay off. His first major film breakthrough came in 2012, when he played the menacing gangster Sultan Qureshi in Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs Of Wasseypur. It was a role that earned him industry attention and press coverage, but not a lot of work. He returned to acting in daily soaps, occasionally doing supporting roles in films like Masaan (2015) and Nil Battey Sannata (2016) that allowed him to showcase different aspects of his craft—particularly the deadpan humour and profundity he brings to his characters. “Satire is one art form where you can choose to just enjoy the humour, but if you want to think deeper, then there’s something beyond humour as well,” he says. “I leave it to the audience. You can treat it as just comedy, but if you understand satire, you’ll see there’s a message there. I make sure that in every character I do, there’s a little bit of a satirical edge.”

In 2017, he played CRPF Commandant Atma Singh in Amit Masurkar’s Newton. It was a complex, nuanced character—one with menace and swagger, but also a sharp, dry wit. That role won Tripathi a National Award and catapulted him back into the spotlight. The offers started pouring in and never stopped.

Since then, he’s had massive hits, both critically and commercially. So many that it’s hard to keep track of the iconic characters he’s portrayed on screen—the gyaan-giving librarian, Rudra, in Stree, the sinister godman, Guruji, from Sacred Games, the menacing and eminently quotable Kaleen Bhaiya from Mirzapur.

As his popularity has grown, Tripathi has also become pickier about his roles. He believes that good storytelling is more than selling tickets; there has to be a strong message that the audience receives while being entertained. That’s why even the gangsters he plays—like Kaleen Bhaiya—are complicated, multifaceted figures, and their propensity for violence is never actually glorified. Many of his characters—from Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’s Anup Saxena to Mimi’s Bhanu—are strong feminist allies. “In life, I want to be around strong female characters,” he says. “Mimi, Anaarkali of Aarah, Gunjan Saxena—in all these films, the lead characters were women. And I was a strong pillar for them. It’s what I want in real life and in the stories that I am a part of.”

Between his philosophical aphorisms and loquacious roles, he comes across as an actor who can sound deep on any subject, without sounding foolish. His face has spawned a million memes (there’s even an Instagram page dedicated entirely to Tripathi memes), and his voice has delivered dialogues have become part of our pop-culture lexicon (“When luck suck everyone fuck”). But how does he inhabit these roles so fully, take these words from the script and transform them into undeniable cinematic truth? “See, I’m the son of a priest. I’ve been a farmer, a politician, a businessman, and a cook. I’ve met gangsters, politicians, writers, doctors, poets, and madmen. And I draw on all of these people and experiences for inspiration,” he says, adding that actors shouldn’t hide behind black car windows and sunglasses, but observe the real world around them.

These days, what Tripathi seeks is peace. From 2018 to 2022, he says, he was working 365 days a year. “I had no work-life balance. I would go to sleep thinking about the script, and I would wake up and immediately leave for the set,” he recalls about that manic creative spell, when he made 35 new films, shorts and television series. “If you’re really hungry, then it’s very likely that you’ll overeat. If you sit and wait for an opportunity for eight years, and then you finally get a chance, you won’t want to sit even for eight seconds! You’ll do this, that, catch a flight and go wherever for work.”

Now, though, he’s feeling a little burnt out and wants to cut back. He’s paid off his EMIs and he wants to be able to sit in his back garden and enjoy the shade of the mango and neem trees he planted there. “I know things will change in five years,” he says, lapsing back into his philosophical musings. “There will be less demand, fewer offers, less work. This is decided; it’s fate. So I’ve already started preparing for that eventuality, by living the life that I would be living then.”

He doesn’t go out much—but he’s not a total hermit. He enjoys hanging out with the small group of friends he’s cultivated—many of whom he’s known since he was a struggler living in a tiny 1BHK. They come to his Madh Island villa, his refuge from the hustle and bustle of Mumbai, and the roving paparazzi. “Here we play songs, have food, laugh,” he shares.

Wait, so he’s a musician too? “I play the tabla,” he admits. “But I’m not amazing at it. I’m just good enough to accompany other musicians, if nobody is available. I am a great lover of music though, I listen to a lot of music.”

This year, he’s looking forward to the release of his next film, Metro In Dino. He calls Anurag Basu a “very organic director,” one whom he loves working with. He’s also got new seasons of Mirzapur and Criminal Justice, plus Gulkanda Tales in the pipeline. But what he really wants to do is to return to theatre. “I want to act and direct, to experience a live audience again…as an actor, not as a celebrity. In the next few months, I want to put together a small one-hour play and take it to the stage.”

Tripathi’s popular character are often the nicest men on screen. IRL too, he wants to use his status and money to give back. “I want to take care of rivers, forests, wildlife,” he shares. “I’m really attached to nature. When I see the horrible state of our rivers, it makes me cry. I’m not saying this to be cool, it really brings tears to my eyes. It’s something that is really close to my heart.”

He’s already played so many roles to perfection—actor, family man, philosopher, just plain good people—that I’m pretty sure he’ll be a damn good environmentalist as well. As I pack my stuff up, Tripathi sees his daughter walk into the garden. “Walk on the grass,” he tells her, insisting that she do it barefoot. He points out a myna bird and asks the teenager to follow it around. Then he notices me looking and chuckles, “There’s an interview going on, he’ll write this down as well.” Well judged, Tripathi Sahab. Well judged, indeed.

Editorial Direction: Megha Mahindru, Ridhima Sapre. Art and Creative Director: Harry Iyer. Hair and Makeup: Suresh Mohanty. Fashion Assistant: Sushiru Yaikhom. Production: By The Gram