Behind the Mask

It took Jaimini Pathak exactly seven days to figure out that he wasn8217;t going to walk the beaten track. After an Economics degree in college, he got into Narsee Monji for their MBA course but corporate yuppiedom didn8217;t seem so inviting after a week of classes and he went back to what he did best 8212; acting. Though he did his MA in English literature, during that time, he was completely immersed into theatre by then. His first professional play Extermination was the enactment of the preface of one of Shaw8217;s plays where he played Christ. Pathak, now 27, started his career seven years ago in one of the best possible ways 8212; with Satyadev Dubey. Besides Extermination he has done The Police and Shaadi Ka Prastav with Dubey and he says that he has no complaints with the roles he has got. quot;So far it has been a dream run.quot; Till now he has done over a dozen plays with stalwarts like Sunil Shanbag in Cyclewala, with Vinod Rangathan in Ek Raat, Naseeruddin Shah8217;s Androcles and the Lion, Bhupendra Deshmukh8217;s AMidsummer8217;s Night Dream, Vikram Kapadia8217;s Romeo and Juliet and right now he is doing R Ramanathan8217;s The Boy Who Stopped Smiling where he plays a seven-year-old child prodigy. An interesting experiment, this play has the children8217;s roles enacted by adults and the cast, it seems, has carried it off perfectly.

quot;One little boy called and insisted on speaking to the boy in the play. He didn8217;t believe that I was the boy,quot; laughs Pathak.

Like most die-hard theatre actors, Pathak funds his passion by his television roles. But it is also something he enjoys, quot;Mostly, I have worked with interesting directors and that has made it worthwhile,quot; he says.

So far, he has done Farz, Lifeline and is currently doing Swabhimaan and Kabhie Kabhie. An quot;immensely forgettablequot; movie is also a part of his oeuvre and he says the dancing and the fighting took some getting used to. He intends to do more films and accepts them for what they are. But in theatre, where he can be choosy about his roles, what is his idealchoice? quot;I am yet to form a theory about the kind of theatre I want to do,quot; he says, quot;But there are no stakes in it for me, no ego trip. It is just a small little pocket of sanity where I sit and hone my craft.quot;