Back to the Beginning

I wasted a lot of my time drifting and experimenting," says Jayant Kripalani, pulling drags restlessly from his cigarette, in between...

I wasted a lot of my time drifting and experimenting," says Jayant Kripalani, pulling drags restlessly from his cigarette, in between rehearsal sessions of Lillete Dubey’s Siren City. A play which ends Kripalani’s eight-year hiatus from the stage with a role somewhat close to his heart.

He plays a writer, grappling with an industry starved of idealism. The story explores the path he takes before he ultimately returns to his paradigm of creativity, from where he began as a writer. The role couldn’t have been more life-like for this Calcutta-bred actor, whose career graph could well qualify him as a rolling stone.

He started acting in his hometown with a theatre group called Red Curtain, way back in the ’70s, which used to enact Shakespeare’s plays. "Calcutta was a cultural hub and I used to watch a lot of plays. I was completely taken in by the stage and ,after a while, some of us got together to form Red Curtain. I’ve been acting since then." Amid the love affair with theatre, Kripalani entered advertising and came to Mumbai as an aspiring actor. An uncomfortable period of culture shock followed. "Even theatre was more commercially-inclined.

It took me time and effort to get used to the work ethics over here." But unlike the character he’s playing, he decided to strive for a niche and dug his heels in.

After receiving a dollop of popularity and fame through television serials, Kripalani slid back to the obscurity of an idealist, unable to adjust to the commercial’ set-up. After years, he appeared again in the television comedy series Sunday Ke Sunday, all the while, searching for his forte. "I wasn’t happy with the kind of work I was getting to do. I couldn’t really pinpoint what was wrong, but there was no challenge. I was out of place.

I almost psyched myself into believing that I was getting stuck and I got out of it soon after." Kripalani returned to advertising for a while, tried his hand at writing, before Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out and later, Vikram Kapadia’s Tughlaq wooed him back to theatre. "I have decided to stick to theatre, as long as I get the kind of roles I like doing. Theatre is the ultimate test of an actor’s credentials, but only when you respect the role," Kripalani says, adamantly. His indifference to the world of floodlights, however, has often cost him dearly. "For a long time, I was unsure of myself as an actor.

Even when I was approached for Siren City, it actually took me a few seconds to accept it. I wasn’t sure if I could act. It was rather unnerving. But the shades of the role made it irresistible. At certain points of the play, I even feel as though I’m talking about my own life," he admits. Yet, his satisfaction is not complete. "I hope to firm up the acting a little more for the perfect texture," he grins.

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Kripalani’s obsession with quality is one of the reasons he eschews Bollywood. His brush with a few directors convinced him of his discomfiture in that environment. "I was aghast at the utter lack of discipline in commercial Hindi cinema. I’ve had discipline grilled into my system throughout my upbringing.

I couldn’t have changed myself into a totally different person trying to adjust to such a system." He doggedly stuck to his guns, even though it meant occasional frustration and missing out on exploring his potential as an actor. But theatre does seem to beckon him for the moment. He’s waiting for a couple of scripts to be finished. Kripalani is also working on a project with Siddharth Basu for television, but "only behind the camera". "It’s too premature to talk aboutt, but it is a promising project."And even if it flops, Kripalani doesn’t seem to be too bothered. He’s seen the worst and it no longer scares him.