Three seasons, three cases. Advocate Madhav Mishra (Pankaj Tripathi) has always found a way to bring justice to his clients, even when there seems to be a mountain of overwhelming evidence against them.
Audiences brought up on Perry Mason have had to swallow their indignation at a smarmy ‘I’m small, I have a vernacular background and I will help you. Even if there are bad days at court, we will win in the end’ act. Three seasons later, you know Mishra's assurances emerge from confidence in the law.
Love or hate this character, you are compelled to watch week after week wondering what a man with no obvious resources is going to do in order to figure out who the culprit really is. Lawyers are a reviled lot, and the first time Madhav Mishra shows up on the small screen saying that the cabbie is his client, it is but natural to be sceptical because it is a murder case rather than a petty crime.
Pankaj Tripathi, who has portrayed gangsters and cops in movies, comes through for the role of this middle-class man who has ‘Studied law in Patna but now practising in Bombay’. A remake of the British TV show of the same name, Tripathi’s practiced humility seems to permeate through three seasons. And with every episode he erodes one's irritation with the small town-ness' of it all.
But Pankaj Tripathi is a small-town man who has made inroads into an industry that defines itself with money and borrowed airport accents. And he’s winning the game too. He was born to a priest-farmer in a village in Gopalganj district of Bihar that still does not have proper roads and continuous electricity. He would help his dad on the farm but participated in the village plays (he hadn’t visited a cinema or watched TV until he grew up). His real tryst with acting happened when he moved to Patna for higher studies. He even joined the ABVP as a student leader and has been incarcerated for participating in protests. His love for books stemmed from that isolation. His thirst for theatre took him to the National School of Drama in Delhi. But the madness for the movies took hold when he saw another lad from Bihar - Manoj Bajpayee - shine on the big screen in Satya. An encounter with the star while Pankaj Tripathi worked as a chef in Hotel Maurya Clarks in Patna sealed his fate. It is rumoured that Pankaj Tripathi kept the pair of chappals Manoj Bajpayee left inadvertently at the hotel as a memento and an inspiration to move to Mumbai.
Mumbai is a mirror to New York: ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere’. And Pankaj Tripathi heard ‘Not Fit’ for the countless auditions he went to in those days when his wife Mridula Tripathi who taught at a school, supported him in his struggle to make it to the big screen. And yes, he started with a bit part in a film called Run where his now familiar voice was dubbed by someone else. You may or may not remember the movie, but his Kauwa biryani scene with Vijay Raz is still funny after all these years.
Whether Tripathi is holding a knife as a butcher in Gangs of Wasseypur or getting stabbed by Hrithik Roshan in Agneepath, you come away from the theatre in awe of the man who has turned his outsider status and heartland origins into an asset.
And he’s received a National Award for this ability as well. In a film called Newton, his co-star Danish Hussain narrates a scene that was improvised between Amit Masurkar, Danish Hussain and Pankaj Tripathi that involves Ray Ban sunglasses. In a scene where Pankaj Tripathi (who plays the CRPF commandant) meets the corrupt DIG police (Danish Hussain), a simple assertion of authority happens when both men take out their sunglasses and Pankaj Tripathi lowers his glasses. These delicate incidents may go unnoticed by the unobservant but speak volumes about an actor’s ability to elevate the script to award winning cinema.
His Naved Ansari in the wonderful but rather quickly aborted TV show Powder about drug addiction remains eminently memorable. How easily he opines, ‘Dekh, apna paisa safed toh hum bhi safed’ (If our money is white, we're clean too). And when he adapts the very Haryanvi accent for his role as Kehri Singh in Gurgaon, calmly asking the kidnapper of his daughter if this was his first kidnapping (the kidnapper has asked for a mere Rs 5 lakh after having kidnapped the daughter of a big land mafia don), Pankaj Tripathi convinces you that he is a native.
In the show Mirzapur (on Amazon Prime Video), Pankaj Tripathi as Akhandanand ‘Kaleen’ Tripathi establishes his credentials by reminding a man - who has slapped Pankaj Trilathi’s unworthy son Munna - with ‘Chutiya hai ye important nahi hai. Hamara ladka hai, ye important hai.’
Mirzapur sort of established his supremacy on the small screen. Pankaj Tripathi who was struggling with multiple rejections at one point is now a fixture on OTT shows. And the word ‘fixture’ applies to him in its kindest and nicest meaning. From Akhandanand the carpet don to his long-haired avatar as Khanna Guruji in Sacred Games, Pankaj Tripathi has found and established his place in the pantheon of actors that rule the world.
If a man’s social media account displays his inner magnificence, then Pankaj Tripathi’s Instagram account is very telling. A book on method acting finds a place along with pictures of his travels with his family. He has expressed his wish to travel to the origin and the mouth of all Indian rivers, and he hopes everyone will travel all across our great country with the means they have at their disposal.
In spite of the instant recognition that he gets these days, the man has remained true to his culture, often heard saying that growing up in the village and then struggling to make a mark taught him everything, but now that he has the work he wanted and wouldn’t trade it for an alternative life, he does hanker for the solitude in company of nature, his distance from his roots.
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